The Last Word

After thinking about it for an entire year, I realize that I cannot leave an obituary to Janet as the last words on Janet's blog. If we learned anything from Janet, it was the value of life. Obituary's are about death. The last words on Janet's site must be about life which she brightened so much for so many. This will be my last blog on this site. This will also be the first time I will blog on this site without providing a status report about Janet. Instead I am going to give you a status report about me. I am going to talk about how other people have impacted my life over the past year, about the experience of grieving, and some stuff that I have learned from this entire experience. With that as an introduction I will now begin the last blog on Janet's site.

No man could have ever have loved a woman more than I loved Janet. She was the centre of my universe, my soulmate and within hours after she died the daily adrenalin flow and panic of the nine months leading up to her death very suddenly stopped. I was left with a huge emptiness, a state of suspended animation, a feeling that this was not my life but that somehow I was playing the starring role in some horrible nightmare movie that hopefully I would wake up from. I hoped I would wake up soon.

It was hard to believe that less than a year earlier I was half of a successful happy active couple that had found each other in the middle of their lives and spent years together comfortably drifting into the latter part of middle age. We had more hopes and dreams and plans for retirement than even we could accomplish. Our lives together which had seemed so perfect, set and protected had suddenly gone horribly wrong. Our relationship and all of our hopes and dreams had just ended against our wishes. Our lives together had been stolen from us by an incidious form of cancer. I can very easily see how surviving spouses end up combating serious depression after the death of their loved one.

In my case this was not to be. There was no time for depression. First there was the charter sailboat trip with my brother Paul and John Nicholson to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It was fun, challenging and very interesting all at the same time. There was not a lot of time to feel sorry for myself.

The sailing trip was followed by a return to work with the TELUS Emerging Markets team who had been so supportive during Janet's illness. Most weeks there were at least a couple of evenings where I would sit with one of my male friends and drink beers and have long talks about life, relationships, family and loss. As spring became summer these chats moved to some of the finest patios in Vancouver. At least a few times each week one or more of the ladies at work would pop into my office to ask how I was doing, "I mean really ... how are you doing?" I must have told and retold the story of Janet's diagnosis, illness and death a hundred times. Each time I told the story it seemed a bit closer to reality and my nightmare movie seemed less like a movie and more like the really bad experience it was.

There were also the neighbours who had me up to their homes for dinner and dropped off food. One of my oldest friends made a habit of popping in and checking on me once a week on Sunday nights. She had promised Janet she would keep a close eye on me and she has ever since. There were invites and lunches with Janet's close girl friends and more opportunties for me to tell and retell the story and talk about how it has impacted all of us.

As time went by reality set in more and more. I made some minor changes around the house and what was "our" home became "my" home. I began to see "our life" as the past and "my life" as the present and the future. I think this was an important step in healing. A clear separation of what was from what is. It actually takes quite a while to truly digest the reality that you will never see your wife again. That she will not walk back through the door returning from some business trip or vacation. That she truly is gone forever. It took me months to truly grasp that concept and I had to work at it.

In the first few months sometimes something would happen that would trigger a sudden memory and I would burst into tears. I used to live in fear that this might happen at work or when I was with others. It never did. It took a few months but over time it stopped. Sometimes memories still cause me tear up a bit though. Perhaps that will always happen.

When I look back on the past year, it seems to have two parts. A survival part and a growth part. The survival part is telling the story and realizing that a relationship with a woman that I adored and expected to last a lifetime has converted itself into a decade long experience. A wonderful experience but an experience with an ending nonetheless.

The growth part was when I came to see myself as incredibly fortunate to have had that decade with that special woman. There are many who never even get that much. I also consider myself incredibly lucky to have been surrounded by this incredible support network of family, friends, colleaques and neighbours to help me get through this terrible experience. Many are not that fortunate.

My advice to anyone who loses someone and does not have a support network would be to go get one. Even if that means joining a support group at a local church or whatever. You will need people to listen to your story and you will need to tell it, likely more than once. Catharsis and healing comes from telling people about the experience. I was so very fortunate to be surrounded by people who were prepared to listen and support me as I started my healing journey.

Enough of this though, lets talk about what I have learned from this experience:

With some things in life we have choices, with others we do not. I have learned to pay close attention to (and really appreciate) when I have choices, because I am acutely aware that things will happen where I do not have a choice. Janet being struck with stage iii/iv Ovarian cancer and not responding well to chemo therapy is a good example of something where I did not have a choice. Not having choices makes choices all that much sweeter. As an example I made the choice to dance until the band packed it in at the TELUS Sales Conference. I had a choice, and it was sweet. If Janet were here she would say "when you have a choice ... choose to have fun." I say appreciate that you have a choice.

Express feelings. I am a human not an island and I may have to face things which I cannot get through on my own. There is no shame in sharing with others how I feel and what is amazing is that when I do, they usually respond really well. We used to have a managing director who had this great line for sales people "when all else fails, try telling the truth" I have adapted it to "when bad things happen, try telling people how you feel."

We enter this world with nothing, and we leave it the same way; with nothing. All we have are the experiences in the middle. We all spend a lot of time acquiring stuff that we leave behind. Look at all that you own and consider that the odds are someone else will own it 75 years from now, and if not, shortly thereafter. I now care about experiences and people. I no longer care about stuff. I have got enough stuff to last me a lifetime. Janet left a lot of stuff behind. Most it was related to her looking good (and she did.)

All I have is now. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow may come, but all I have right now is what I have right now. I have learned to love what I have right now because I know from first hand experience that there are no guarantees I will have tomorrow. Yesterday, Janet did not get a tomorrow. When something upsets me I ask myself "would I care if I weren't going to be here tomorrow." Its amazing how that puts things into perspective. I find its a good test of what to sweat and what not to. I am not perfect at this yet. I am still working on it.

A common question I get asked is "has Janet communicated with you since she died." The answer to that is "no". I have not heard her voice, she has not starred in any of my dreams (I really wish she would) and I have had no sightings of her. I often talk to her, sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud. She doesn't answer, but I don't need her to, because I already know what she would say to almost anything I would say to her anyway. I think about her many times each day and I miss her a great deal. Perhaps I always will.

Ovarian cancer robbed my lovely wife of her life. In the name of both of us I will not empower it to take mine as well. My lovely wife Janet would want and expect me to sit out one of life's inning's in her honour. I have done that with great respect and love for my soulmate. She would not want or expect me to sit out the entire game of life. I could not do that and I will not do that.

Tomorrow I will take off my wedding ring and I will officially start a new life once again as Mark Dennis single guy. I am not sure I am completely ready for it, but I fear that if I wait I may never be ready. The year Janet and I bought and renovated our home I said to her "but its not a good time Janet" she said "well, when is a good time?" She had a good point, there is no good time to do reno's and there is also no good time to get back into life.

Janet's last words to me were "so how do we do this Mark?" What she meant was how do we say goodbye. I said, "we don't baby, just lie back and go to sleep, we will talk about it in the morning."

My morning hasn't come yet. I have right now, and I will live that now until morning comes ... and when it does ... I hope that Janet and I get to finish that conversation.