My wife Rebecca and I marked our 26th anniversary while she was receiving in-patient care at a hospice center for colon cancer pain management. Although “celebrated” isn’t quite the right word, we certainly made an effort.
On that day, I dressed up and brought her an elegant blue dress, pictures from our quirky wedding, and a bottle of her favorite Barbaresco. After consulting with her doctor, I took her to the garden in a wheelchair to enjoy it. It was a sunny Friday of a warm Labor Day weekend. The Prairie Memory Garden was in full late-summer bloom, with a playful pair of blue butterflies joining us.
Rebecca was feeling a bit less miserable, so after reminiscing about our wedding, she reminded me of her wishes for my life without her. She wanted me to support our daughters emotionally and financially, remember her with love but not morbidity, and not be afraid to love again—because, despite the pain, it would be worth it.
“Please, not today,” I said, taking her hand and kissing her pale cheek. “It’s our anniversary!”
“I know, but you’ve had a tough couple of years too.”
“Nothing compared to you, and you’ve said all of this!” I replied.
Rebecca had indeed told me all of this countless times. She had been facing death for nearly three years since we learned the cancer had spread to her lungs and was almost certainly fatal.
We had recently visited MD Anderson in Houston for a second opinion. The experts there said there were no new treatments on the horizon.
We were married in Houston at the Rothko Chapel, and we stopped there after the appointment. We sat together holding hands in silence. The artist’s haunting purple canvases had been part of both the happiest and most difficult days of our lives.
We both knew this was our last anniversary together. Rebecca was just 53.
“Sorry, but I feel guilty about putting all of you through this,” she said, sipping her wine and putting her arm around me.
“Guilty for being sick?” I asked.
“Yes. The last three years have been hardest on you, but the rest will be hardest on the girls,” she said. “You’ll find someone new, but they’re losing their mother.”
She looked determined and moved her arm away. “Even if you meet someone here at the hospice, stay open to it! Just find someone the girls like.”
“Damn it, stop!” I said, raising my voice a bit. It was all too much. “Please!”
Her lungs were full of tumors, and she needed oxygen to breathe; at home, she would accidentally pull the tubes out in the middle of the night, waking us both in a nervous panic.
Rebecca had become so thin that her skin looked white and shiny like porcelain. Still, she was strong and beautiful—always thinking of others before herself, as she had since I’d known her.
Rebecca did fieldwork for her economics Ph.D. in the highlands of Ecuador, helping indigenous people get land titles for credit. Later, she worked for the U.N. in Rome and consulted in Africa and South America. Even in the past year, she trained extensively with the Red Cross to assist people displaced by fires. With her dear friend Deb and me, she even picked out the spot for her memorial bench along a local creek conservancy.
Earlier that week, before our anniversary, she got delirious and thought she was acting in a play that night. Determined to get up and dressed, she was too weak to do so. She humored me by letting me brush her hair until she finally got up to do it herself, dragging her oxygen tank to the bathroom. Then she saw her reflection in the mirror.
“Do you see how sick you are, honey?” I asked.
She nodded sadly, and I helped her back into bed.
The next day, she agreed to be admitted briefly to the inpatient hospice center for pain relief.
Feeling a little better on our anniversary, she had her wits about her despite the pain. Calming myself, I told her I loved her and thanked her for thinking of the girls and me. She smiled, and we returned to our wine. Her cheerful, slightly sarcastic humor, which had carried us through all our years together (especially the last three), returned. She teased me about my red wine mustache and the cheap green suit I wore to our wedding.
We toasted to our years together.
Wheeling her back from the garden, I noticed an elderly woman struggling with a walker heading into the hospice center.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said to Rebecca, pretending to recognize the woman. “That’s my new special friend, Bernice!”
Rebecca let out that honest, earthy laugh I loved. It was the last time I heard it in all its glory.
She struggled for one more month. On the morning her pain finally ended, I bathed her and put on a perfume she liked. After days of incoherence, she startled me by suddenly observing, “That’s not deodorant I smell!”
“You’re right, it’s the Vera Wang I got you for Christmas,” I told her.
“That was a winner!” she cried happily. Those were her last words to me.
Later that day, my last words to her were that she was the finest person I’d ever met.
That afternoon, I sat at the memorial bench Rebecca had chosen, with our two daughters on either side of me. We briefly held hands and closed our eyes. It was a discordantly beautiful October afternoon.
The bench was beside a briskly bubbling creek with stepping stones to cross above a manufactured rapid. Just then, a mom, dad, and two young girls came tiptoeing over the creek, as the four of us had done when our girls were little. We sat silently for a few more minutes, each lost in our thoughts and searing memories. The sun glowed through the fall leaves above the peaceful creek setting. Rebecca had picked the perfect spot for just this moment and many more in the future.
Condolences came in from people worldwide: old colleagues in Rome, Ecuador, and Tanzania; friends from four continents; an elderly couple she’d recently met at a fire; lives she’d touched. We pulled off the complex memorial service Rebecca had planned in considerable detail. The service went well, but then the crowd was gone, and I was back to sleeping in the same bed where she’d struggled and found peace.
The bright sunny days of October turned into the gloomy gray skies of November in Wisconsin. I was alone in our house, surrounded by Rebecca’s things and my memories. There were stacks of medical supplies, suddenly both conspicuous and useless; there was that tragically powerful hairbrush.
I learned a lot about grief. It was easier to deal with her things—to store or throw them away—in the mornings when I was fresh. I learned that things, however charged, were just things. I tried to schedule evenings to cry so I would do it less at work, with mixed results. The tears seemed to come from an inexhaustible spring.
Several sad months passed. I sometimes still cried at work but would turn my chair to look out the window so others couldn’t see me easily. Those who did see me were kind and supportive. I missed Rebecca terribly, but the girls and I made it through our longest winter.
In April, I received a call from Rebecca’s close friend Deb, who had helped us choose the spot for her bench. Deb told me Rebecca had asked her to call me six months after her death to encourage me to meet new people—including women.
Rebecca!
Even after she was gone, she found a way to show me how much she cared. She taught me so much about courage, compassion, and love. For her, love was a form of generosity, a way of seeing and valuing the other person beyond the moment—even beyond the grave. She saw how hard my life would be without her, but her love wasn’t about a jealous clinging—it was about helping to set me free. There’s a profound truth in that.
As my fellow widows know, there is your life before the death of your beloved spouse and your life after. The pain never fully goes away. I still miss Rebecca. For me, grief is like weather; a storm can rise up suddenly on even the sunniest day. The storm clouds always have a name and face.
It’s been 10 years since Rebecca passed. I’ve been lucky to find another generous partner—and I haven’t felt a second of guilt about moving forward with my life because of the gift Rebecca gave me.
