THE MORNING I WALKED INTO A GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP

I sat there, in my car, for what felt like an eternity. It was a cold, overcast Thursday morning in mid-February 2024, just like in the movies. I drove one hour to a city in Virginia to attend a Loss of Spouse Grief Share support Group, hoping to grasp even the tiniest ray of hope that I might, maybe, possibly survive this massive, devastating loss. Most times I didn’t want to survive, but our 15 year old son and 10 year old daughter needed a parent.

My husband, best friend, lover and, in my completely unbiased opinion, the Better Parent of Every Year 🥇 in our household, died three months earlier after living three years with terminal brain cancer, Glioblastoma. He was 66 years old, I was 48.

Also, I needed others to show me that my faith in the God of the impossible could survive what felt like an irreparable break in trust. See, in our family, we believed in complete healing and restoration. Trials? Yes. But death? Death was never part of the plan.

So there I was. I didn’t know it then, but I was already living the infamous Both/And: my strong desire to meet others who were living without their person and the sometimes stronger desire to not be on this earth without him. It would take me some time to realize that this mental tug-of-war didn’t need to be resolved. Both desires can coexist.

AND I DIDN’T RUN AWAY

Surreal is an understatement. Out-of-body experience comes closer. I watched myself stepping out of my car and walk toward the church doors as if in slow motion.

I remember exactly what I was wearing, it was one of my favorite turtle neck sweaters, burnt orange, jeans and sneakers. The same burnt orange turtle neck sweater I wore to see my husband in the hospital after he was admitted for speech and language trouble. Same one I wore to see the neurologist after his brain surgery. And the sweater I put on one day when I went to be by his side after he fell into a coma.

Somehow I mustered up the energy to shower, put my hair in a bun, do a bit of make up, and drive all the way there after dropping our kids off at school.

As I closed my car door, my mind started to spiral. How was this my life? How was this the end of my beautiful husband’s story? How was this the life our children now had to face without him?

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY 

I climbed the church steps hating every second of it. When I reached the top, Maggie and Ginny, the group moderators, greeted me with long, tight hugs. “Liliana, we are so glad you are here…”  I understood what they meant.

The hugs lingered and the tears started to flow. In that moment I knew I was not where I wanted to be, but where I needed to be, in the presence of the most beautiful bouquet of widows, who would become soul sisters and a lifeline in my healing.

Support groups are not for everyone. I get that. But I was there, at my most vulnerable, sitting with a lovely bunch of strangers. We had all been dealt the shittiest set of cards in the game of life, and we could understand each other in ways that no one else could, as much as they wanted to.

I grabbed a coffee, some fruit, a pastry, and sat in the seat with my name on it. There was a pen, handouts on grief and partner loss, and a box of Kleenex. I hated being there. I hated the reason that had brought me there. Images of support groups on TV shows flickered through my mind. Again, how was this MY life???!!!

TO SPEAK OR NOT TO SPEAK

Certainly I wasn’t going to speak, but everything poured out anyway. The shock, the rage, the confusion, the fear, the utter sadness and devastation. It all came flooding out like a broken dam after a storm. I broke open.

Two and a half hours felt short.

By the end of the meeting I signed up for the next 12-week GriefShare session . Every week, I made the drive, I hour up and 1 hour back, sometimes barely remembering how I arrived or how I made it home.

Side note: grieving people should NOT be allowed to drive, anybody with me 🙋🏻‍♀️???!!!  Here’s my first pitch: For at least a year, we should be assigned drivers for our own safety and everyone else’s, but that’s another story for another blog.

Hi, my name is Lilliana, and my beautiful husband Horace died December 3rd, 2023 after living 3 years with terminal brain cancer.   

Fuck Glioblastoma. Fuck Cancer. Fuck Death. ❤️‍🩹.