Lowered Expectations

A year to the day that my husband died, Willie Nelson released a new album called ‘Last Man Standing.’ Coming up on 89 years old, Willie is credited with making light of his longevity by saying this about climate change; “I think youngsters need to start thinking about what kind of world they’re going to leave me and Keith Richards.” You have to laugh. 

Yet in his song ‘Last Man Standing,’ he admits “It’s getting hard to watch my pals check out…Waylon and Red and Merle and old Ronald.”  I think it’s fair to say that Willie, like so many in their later years, has experienced more than his share of loss. I became aware of the album when suddenly, three or four of my friends sent me the link to one of the songs on it called “Something You Get Through.” The chorus is the simple line “It’s not something you get over, it’s something you get through.” 

Truer words were never spoken. (See ‘Nothing Helps and Everything Helps.’) It’s a beautiful song (I recommend giving it a listen) and it also got me thinking about ‘getting through.’ For my experience of the beginning of grief was that there were an awful lot of days of just ‘getting through’ and yet there’s not much acknowledgement of this part of grieving. It seems as if many people and even the world at large measure how you’re doing by ‘progress’ toward some elusive grief and recovery goal. “Are you doing better?” “Are the girls back in school, doing OK?” “You look great; I can tell you’ve landed on your feet!” 

I used to joke with some of my widowed friends that every widow should be given a red lipstick along with the death certificate in a widow’s ‘loot bag’ from the funeral home, because every time I wore red lipstick, people I encountered said I looked like I was doing well. No red lipstick, eyes cast downward and avoidance behaviour. I wasn’t really doing better when I had red lipstick on, but it made them feel better, I guess. 

We bereaved present others with evidence of their worst fear – that someone they love could die and leave them grieving and bereft, too. So they are very invested in you getting ‘better’ soon. Societal expectations – and even those close to us – can also make us feel as if grief should be a linear process that begins after the death of someone we love and moves forward in a clear, healing, upward arc. But we bereaved know that’s not at all true. 

Certainly, there are days when we feel as if this is something we can do. We get out of bed and despite the fact that we’re missing someone we love, still find the strength to do what needs to be done. We feed the kids or the cat and get ourselves off to work, we pay the bills, we take a walk or volunteer at the shelter, we connect with a friend or read an interesting book, we create something of beauty, sweep off the porch or cook a good meal and tumble into bed with a small feeling of weary triumph.  

But there are those other days. 

Lots of them. Days where you can’t even get out of bed. Days where the simplest tasks are insurmountable. Days where you need help just taking minimum care of yourself or those you love. Days where you doubt your own ability, strength and courage. Days where the hole left by your beloved threatens to swallow you up. Days where you feel as if you will drown in a tsunami of grief that comes pouring in through your windows. I believe it helps to admit that there are LOTS of days like that, particularly in the earliest painful days of loss. 

The first Christmas after Peter died, I told myself “I’m going to make this the Best Christmas Ever!” I over-bought, over-baked, over-decorated and overall set completely unrealistic expectations of how Christmas would be. But when we put on Santa hats and tried to pose for our first ever Christmas card as a threesome, the result was three wan smiles, the eldest with tears in her eyes. I asked what was wrong and she said “I was always in front of Baba.” Of course, in our family of four, the eldest, tallest child stood in front of the tallest adult. When we went to get our Christmas tree, I got it on top of the car and secured with ropes just the way Peter always did and dissolved into tears. All of our holiday traditions just became painful echoes of past happiness.  

When I look back now, all that occurs to me is “What on earth was I thinking?” Of course, it was an epic fail! We had a big hole blown in Christmas named Peter/Daddy. How could it possibly be otherwise? I realized too late that instead of the BCE (Best Christmas Ever) I’d be lucky if I achieved the BCPUC (Best Christmas Possible Under the Circumstances.) We muddled through with lots of different emotions and to be honest, I think we were relieved when it was all over.  

I learned from that fail and the following year I told my girls and my friends that I’d figured out what I wanted for Christmas this year. “I’m giving myself the gift of ‘Lowered Expectations’ I said, “and you don’t have to buy a thing!” I stuck to my plan, reined in the excess and paid attention to my need for a simple, quiet holiday that made room for poignancy as well as joy. But what started as a Christmas of “just getting through” still brought small moments of love and hope. When I went to fill the stockings, I saw that mine was already filled by my girls and when I went to put them away, pink paper hearts drifted out of them that Peter had put there 2 years before! A friend dropped by unexpectedly when I was about to tumble into the pit. Beautiful memories of Christmases past came flooding back once I cleared a space for them. And somehow, it hurt far less than when I tried to push the grief away with busyness, excess or over-the-top celebrations.

It turns out that there are a lot of days of just ‘getting through’ and holidays are probably at the top of that list. You don’t have to ‘make progress’ on grief every day. You can ‘turtle’ or hibernate and the sky won’t fall. Even journeys that are generally upward and healing have lots of setbacks, backsliding and plateaus. It’s a rocky path and it’s OK to rest or even lick your wounds and gather your strength for the next ascent.  

Twenty-five years ago in pastoral counselling bereavement training, we learned that helping professions were discarding the word ‘closure’ in favour of ‘integration’ in relation to loss and grieving. We learned that loss adds a colour to your life that is always there, but over time, as you add joy and new happiness to your life, you surround and integrate your grief into the life you now lead and lessen its power over you. Or, as a friend said to me about the loss of her sister “There’s still a big hole in my life; I just don’t fall in it as often.” It’s another way of saying “It’s not something you get over, it’s something you get through.”    

So give yourself the gift of ‘Lowered Expectations’ on those days when just getting through is a triumph. Remember when you feel just a tiny bit better, if you crawl out of the pit even once, chances are you can do it again. And wait patiently for the sun to come up on a new day that might just offer a ray of hope and belief in yourself that you can, with love and time, ‘get through’ and come out the other side.