Keeping it Real

When Julie decided to start blogging about her battle with Ovarian Cancer, one of her guiding principles was that she would keep it real. Life is not always a bed of roses and although it was her heart’s desire for her writing to be an encouragement and inspiration to others, she also recognized that being honest about the difficulties and struggles also was a part of help others walk a similar path. I will move on with some blogs unrelated to her death, but I believe being transparent and honest about the aftermath of death is not only healing for me, but also something that will help other families who lose a loved one to a similar battle in the future.

I originally wrote this poste 3 weeks ago and it didn’t save so I took that as it just wasn’t the right time to publish it. I have since updated it.

Just a little over a week ago was the 2-month anniversary of Julie going home to be with the Lord. Our children and their spouses and their children all went to Pigeon Forge over the Easter weekend to scatter her ashes at one of our favorite types of family vacations — a cabin in the Great Smokey Mountains. She had asked us to either do it in the mountains or at the beach and we decided that the mountains were where we had more relaxation and just enjoyed being around each other more in the past. We had originally planned to scatter on Saturday, but weather forecast was for rain Saturday, so we decided to do it late Friday afternoon. Each person had a small scattering tube with a small amount of her ashes, and we scattered them from the back porch into the Smokey Mountain National Park. Afterwards, Tricia gave each of us a gift bag with a USB drive with the video she had created. What an amazing video that Tricia worked on since we first came back from Honduras and Julie began Chemo. Thank you, Tricia! The video is embedded below if you would like to watch it and haven’t already seen it on Facebook. We had a great trip and other than the scattering of ashes and watching the video I didn’t get emotional.

Q 1: How are you doing?

A: About normal I think. I have looked at the various stages of grief and honestly I cannot figure out where I fit. I am not in denial/avoidance — I think I mostly moved beyond denial before her death though I think there are times that I temporarily slip back into it for a short time. I have some amazing family and friends that regularly call or message me or drop a card to let me know they are thinking about me or see how I am doing. I am very thankful for ALL of these contacts and if I am being honest there are days where I would like to take a brief time to pretend like this didn’t all happen and those calls interfere with that, but that is a good thing. I never really identified with being in the anger stage, but a little deeper reading tells me that when I get really emotional and cry for a little bit that is probably the anger stage. Thankfully I don’t stay there long either. I went through a brief time of the bargaining stage before she even died and I think I got that out of my system then. Honestly, I think I spend most of my time in the acceptance stage, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t missed greatly. There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t have something I would like her input on or have something that I want to tell her or show her. So there is hurt a small portion of many days and I guess that is the anger stage I am going in and out of, but everything I read is that this is normal and healthy grief, but it still hurts at those times. Mother’s Day was a difficult day for me because my heart was aching for the loss that the children and grandchildren have. What would have been our 30th anniversary is coming up on May 30th and I know that will be an emotional day as well for my own loss, but I am also thankful that God has spared her of the ongoing pain of cancer and of having to endure the financial and political mess that we are starting to experience in this world.

Q 2: How are the kids doing?

A: All I can answer is what I observe, but I would say most of them are similar to me. I think all of them are working through the loss at various rates, but I think they are all processing it in a healthy way. There is no “right” amount of time to be in each stage of grief, but I don’t see where any of the kids have gotten stuck and not moving through the stages of grief. This will be a year of firsts….. first Mother’s Day, first Birthdays, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, etc. without Julie so I think the first year will have ups and downs and that is normal and okay.

Q3: Is the paperwork, etc. overwhelming?

A: Honestly, because we saw this possibility coming, we had some of our affairs set up perfect to make this transition easy and some of them were purely accidental. I have learned a lot and my advice would be if you are married in particular (or have children), make sure you have all of your bank accounts set up with Payable on Death beneficiaries, make sure your home deed is transferable on death to the co-owner and make sure you have beneficiaries listed on every account you have. We had a will, but I never had to use it for anything because everything was already set up to transfer without probate. Do your family a favor and make sure they know where every account is located (retirement accounts, etc.). Had something happened to me first, Julie would have been struggling to figure it all out and would have probably left money unclaimed and I thought I had everything identified.

Q4: When are you going to start dating?

A: Julie and I talked about this several times. She told me on more than one occasion that I “needed” to get married quickly and I told her that I couldn’t even imagine dating. In the letter that she wrote 2 years ago and left for me to open after she was in heaven she strongly encouraged me to date and see what God had in store, but be patient and wait on Him to send the right woman that would be good for me, our children, and our grandchildren. That is what I plan to do. I am not in a rush, but I am also not going to refuse to go out with people and see what God’s plans are and in the mean time enjoy life. I do know the standards have been set pretty high.

Q5: What are your plans now?

A: My plans are to keep doing what the Lord already has me doing until He directs me in a different direction. God has given me a ministry of mentoring young (and some older) men into a deeper spiritual walk and I plan to continue doing that. In January, I was blessed to be able to move into a position at RYAM (the company I have been working for) corporate that allows me to work from home and not have after hours call rotation. I plan to continue to live here in Jesup — at least until Hannah graduates from High School (she is a Junior) to give her some stability that she needs in this time of transition. I recently bought a pop-up tent camper and plan to travel and enjoy some of God’s creation that I haven’t had a chance to see and also to make more memories with the children and grandchildren.

Q6: Are you planning on continue to blog?

A: Yes! I know I have been slow in releasing a blog and I won’t be on the weekly schedule that she had, but it is still a platform of ministry that I hope to continue as God gives me the topics. I won’t blog just to blog, but I do want to be an encouragement for her followers. You may have to excuse typos and blogs that sound link an engineer wrote them because I no longer have an editor that holds my feet to the fire to meet her standards. I know I will get back to the series I had started of Walking in Grace, but since her passing I have had a lot of things to do that I had been putting off to be with her and take care of her in the last month.

Ben