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No regrets with this load of hurt

Something surprising struck me as the impending one-year mark of my bride’s death pressed down on my chest with the pressure of a beached Blue Whale.

I have no regrets.

Which seems weird as I mourn      the essence of Patricia no longer a part of my day-to-day life. The feel of her hand in mine, mine in hers. The different sound of her voice through a range of moods and emotions.  The lushness of her hair as I would run my hand through it, exactly as it was the first time I had the courage to touch it during an early kiss.

Me and my ladies — Patricia, Anna and Kristina. Everything.

The sound of her voice. They say this is the first thing you lose after somebody dies. But I purposely haven’t played a recording of my bride – not sure I can take that yet – and still I hear her perfectly in all of her inflections. 

OK, this last piece is no longer true. It was when I began writing this, but then a friend of Patricia sent me a video. In it, Patricia records Anna in her then-     new apartment in Calgary. Anna had just moved in a few weeks before we rushed my bride to the Royal Alexandra      Hospital. In the recording, Patricia pans the lens to show the entire suite while she describes it from top to bottom.  You never see Patricia in the video. But her voice is a gem, nuanced, playful, matter-of-fact      and clear. And somehow sexy, even as she describes cabinets and lighting fixtures.

The voice is exactly what’s been in my head these last 11 months. I stopped the recording, played it one more time then sat, speechless for maybe a minute. Then I cried harder than I ever remember weeping.

I can’t roll on     to her side of the bed. Her night table stands unchanged from the morning she last awoke in our home, a pair of glasses in a holder I bought her for her last Mother’s Day, some jewelry, a photo of the two of us in Mexico.

Yet I can’t muster up regret.

As I miss her, mourn      her and deal with fits of rage over her death, regret remains absent.  I’m angry that our time together is over so soon. I wish I hadn’t done some things, that I had done others. Regret, though? No. It feels like regret would be counter to the great life that we had together.

Since August 5 of last year at 5:23 pm I’ve spoken to a lot of people whose partner died. Some really do have regret. Those aren’t my stories to share, and I’m so thankful I’m not wearing that on top of everything else.

It’s not me.

Our life was filled with passion, which has many forms. Sometimes it’s messy, often it comes with heart-pounding joy. It’s never boring. And it’s so simple despite seeming so complicated. I don’t regret a moment of it. Life needs spice and some spices can make your eyes water and your skin sting. But it balances out with the sweeter spices to leave a great taste when all is said and done. And when all was said and done with Patricia and me, there were no more words that needed to be said. We were holding hands and I was stroking that luscious hair as she breathed her last breath.

I have no idea how I got so lucky to be that sad. Sad seems like a sad word to describe the end of a long, beautiful marriage and the knowledge that your amazing daughters are being just as broken in different ways. But every other word for sadness that I can think of just doesn’t do the trick. Whatever the word, to feel as horrible as I did – as I do – is a fantastic gift.

Weird, I know.

But it’s like the end of a great book, or trip. It’s over, but, damn, what a ride!

I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends and acquaintances going through divorce. We connect on the grief of loss,      but it’s so different when all of the other elements come into play. When something broke apart rather than being ripped away.

To feel is to live. To feel so much pain of so much loss is to have lived incredibly. I’ll take that.

Life is funny in a sometimes-sad way. But it’s still funny. And I’ve turned to humor in a big way to heal.

First of all, I’m not embarrassed to say I’ve been seeing a shrink. One with a sense of humor and who doesn’t mind me calling her a shrink. It’s great to have a pro talk me through the mental bruises and breaks. A session isn’t complete without at least a few tears chased by a laugh or two.

Second, I took some stand-up comedy classes and will do my first show later in the summer. All the best comedians are broken, right? Even if it’s a bomb show, who can hurt me now?

And finally, I’ve turned to the wisdom of comedians to heal. No offense to the great spiritual gurus out there, but I’ve found the words of fellas like Canadian funny man Jim Carrey is just what the doctor ordered.

He talks about faith in ways a lot of Sunday morning preachers could learn a few things from.  There is some cool stuff out there on the web with Carrey speaking to a graduating class about life happening for you, not to you. About having faith, asking for and believing in what you want in life and working toward it without worrying about the how. No talk about hunting down converts or any particular kind of religion.

Just taking a chance on faith.

It sounds a lot more like what I’ve read that’s been attributed to Christ and other spiritual gurus than the stuff I’ve heard booming down from pulpits.

I’ve had some folks over these last 11 months suggest that dying ‘before your time’ doesn’t jibe with their brand of faith.

“Didn’t you pray hard enough?” they imply. “Didn’t you believe strongly enough? Don’t you believe in miracles?”

I do. I believe in the miracle that creation gave the world Patricia, and I feel blessed to have had her in my life as long as I did.

Life isn’t measured in hours, it’s measured in quality. That I’m sure of. And Patricia packed in a high measure of quality in her years. That was clear to all who knew her but it was also clear in how she lived her last days:      with grace, satisfaction and gratitude.

Zero regret.

Would she have happily taken more time? Of course.

But there was no regret in the life she lived, and she refused to ask “why is this happening to me?”.  My love told me this explicitly from her hospital bed at the Royal Alex not long before she left this life. With tubes inserted into her to do the job her body was no longer able to do and not physically strong enough to get up on her own, she said: “I won’t ask why. I’ve loved my life.”

How the hell can I have any regret? I loved – love – my life with her. I have no regret, only gratitude for every      millisecond I spent with her on this planet and having her           now and forever implanted in my heart.

So, even gone from this earth, Patricia is impacting the way I live here. Because I now realize I don’t regret the things in my life I was sure I regretted. I don’t love everything that’s happened, but I can’t regret them. They’ve shaped me. And can continue to shape me if I just let them.

I just have to listen to my bride. And Jim Carrey.

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Bye, Bye Love…

You just never know what the next tick on the clock will bring. For me, at 5:23 pm on August 5 it brought the end to the time on this earth for my soul mate and true love.

That’s when Patricia Renee Raidt drew her last breath after a gut-wrenching one-month assault from cancer. And my heart will never be the same.

It wasn’t a fair fight.

Pat had a history of cancer attacks and did all the right things. She made great lifestyle choices and had regular screenings and visits to her doctor and specialists. And still…

The last time I blogged – my return to blogging – was to signal my attempts to publish a new novel and the featuring of a short story in a magazine. Now that all seems so, well, meh.

It’s cliqued, but it’s amazing how quickly things can change. Below is an excerpt from my diary on July 31 to show you what I mean:

It’s the last day of July, a month that started with so much promise.

I had two weeks and change off from work, from Canada Day through July 15th. Pat was back home from taking care of her dad in Calgary and we were going to have our first long stretch alone together since she started looking after her parents back in November. First her mom was ill, then her dad was diagnosed with cancer. Kristina was coming home on the 9th and Anna was going to be in town, too.

July 10th was going to be spent hanging out with our girls before they hit the road to Calgary where Kristina would see Anna’s new apartment in the central neighborhood of Eau Claire. They’d do some Stampeding. Pat and I were going to pop down as well. Visit some friends, do some Stampeding of our own, and see more of the girls.

The first week went well. We had a fantastic time together, though Pat’s pain from the hip issue she’d been suffering from – and seeing docs, physio and naturopaths about– limited what we could do. But we were together. Kristina landed on the 9th as planned. I picked her up myself because Pat’s hip was hurting. Back home we had a great reunion. It was the first time seeing each other without a screen between us since Christmas.

The evening ended well.

We’d see Anna in the morning.

Instead, Pat’s pain intensified Sunday morning. Her breathing was tight. Alarmingly so. Kristina called an ambulance.

Today, I sit watching my bride lying on a bed in the Royal Alexandra Hospital’s Robbins Pavilion. She has a beautiful view of downtown Edmonton. If she could get up, she’d see a lovely park that she has no hope of ever visiting.

Pat is dying of cancer that has somehow savaged her entire body. Confoundingly, they tell us this is the work of the cancer she bravely battled –and beat, we thought – seven years ago. That took a hysterectomy, chemo and radiation. But the damn thing came back.

And it rapidly spread. To her left lung, her spine, bones throughout her body, her kidney and on and on. But it seems like it’s the kidney that’s going to get her. Perhaps in days. Maybe weeks. No more they say. 

They doubt she’ll make our 25th wedding anniversary on October 4th. I’m holding out hope, if it doesn’t cause her too much pain. Her birthday on November 11th will almost certainly be a Remembrance Day of my time with her. Christmas? There really seems no way.

We’ve been together exactly 30 years. We started dating the same year my mom died of cancer at 58. Now, as my daughters follow in my footsteps at almost exactly the same age, my heart is ripping out from multiple directions. 

What helps is my many talks with Pat over the last few days. Her breathing is difficult but through the gasps she exudes a bravery that, when it comes right down to it, seems based on both the simplest and most profound of things.

She’s content with the way she lived her life. Goal number one was to walk, really walk with our girls through their lives. To be there in every sense of the word. Hear them out, share, talk through problems. Really and truly. To go on fieldtrips, to volunteer in every event, be on the sidelines or in the crowd at every concert, competition, and ceremony. To cry with them when they needed to cry – day and night, 24-7. To move them to Toronto, to campus, to Calgary. Help set up apartments and clean them up. To cry and laugh. At the right time. When it was needed, wanted, no questions asked.

Pat did that. And she thanked me this week for helping her do it.

She told me that she won’t ask why this is happening to her. She’d love more time. But she says she’s content. She’s run a good race- a very, very good race. She told me she’s thankful for this and that’s enough. My bride refuses to be bitter. That, I’m sure, will help her into whatever is next.

Pat did this all while being a hell of a bride. She supported me through everything. Everything. Through my career whipsaw, my stroke recovering, and my writing. She was the first editor on my first two, as of yet, unpublished books. Her pen was on my blogs, on feature stories, and short stories that I’ve published.

She consoles me even now, while she’s in her hospital bed dying. She’s still giving advice and support to our girls. She called a counselling session to help her parents cope. She makes silly jokes to console us. Like a play on the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Kindergarten Cop. There’s a line Arnie delivers when the kids are driving him crazy and he has a headache. A kindergartener suggests that it may be a tumor.  Schwarzenegger says, in his thick Austrian accent: “It’s not a tumower.”

One day, out of the blue, Pat tells me and the girls, with a smile on her face: “It is a tumower.”

And for 30 years, I’ve tried to get her to fist pump me. She always explained that she doesn’t fist pump. But now, seeing the pain and fear in my eyes, she consoled me with regular fist pumps including an added end-of-fist-pump move that included a spreading of her hand and a ‘bowww’ sound.

What a woman.

This was the last day Pat saw Anna. Anna was to start articling at a law firm in Calgary and Pat insisted that she not put it off. She wanted to know, I believe, that before she passed, Anna had moved on to launch her career. Kristina remained with us, on a break from her post in Toronto. Pat now knew that both girls were launched full throttle into their career paths.

By the end of the following day, the love of my life slipped into a coma. I talked her ear off for the next week, as did Kristina and her friend Mary, before she passed away that Friday. It was beautiful that Pat was able to pass with that peace surrounding her. Her hands held; her hair stroked.

I was with her every day, all day from the time she was admitted, over night for the best part of the final two weeks. Before the coma, we had lots of great talks, though they were stilted due to the pain. In a weird way, they were some of the best days of my life. And I’m so happy for the peace she had knowing she’d run a great race and left this world with a great connection to her girls and me.

Now she’s ready for whatever is next…

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