Tags Posts tagged with "grief"

grief

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

A friend who is the same age as I am recently and suddenly died, leaving behind a wife and two daughters in college who are the same age I was when my father died.

I feel like I’m at the center of a prism, with light bouncing out in so many directions that it’s difficult to track each path.

I am devastated for my friend. I know he will miss many of the same things my father never got to experience. He won’t see his daughters graduate from college, develop their careers, and enjoy learning about themselves through relationships.

He also won’t get to wake up another morning and see his wife’s smile, make plans for the day, and make the kinds of decisions we take for granted, like where to go on vacation, whom to see over the weekend, what friend to call and visit, or how to brighten someone else’s day.

I knew him as a dedicated father, who beamed when he spoke of his twin daughters. Unlike so many other parents whose children play sports, he didn’t need his daughters to be superstars. His joy mirrored theirs. 

I’m sorry for his wife, too, who shared two decades of experience with him and their two children. She went from being in an empty nest to being in an empty house in 18 months. Everywhere she looks, she will see reminders of her husband and the life they shared.

I relate to his daughters. I know how strange it is to be in college, surrounded by friends who suddenly don’t know what to say to them. If friends ask the girls how they are doing, will they tell them, leaving many of their friends without the tools, experience or words to respond?

Death leaves a hole in our lives. The friends they have in college, like mine decades ago, may not know about that hole and may not have even met the man missing from the center of their lives.

A week after I buried my father, I was back at school, finding it difficult to concentrate or even to care about upcoming exams or responsibilities. 

When I told a math professor about my loss, he went out of his way to tutor me, to ask me how I was, and to be patient, waiting for me to tell him when I was ready to take a midterm. He arranged for me to take an exam on my own. He made a point of looking for me after each lecture. I appreciated the support and, yet, I felt so weak and angry that I needed it.

I remember the first horrifying moment I didn’t feel the weight of the loss of my father. I was wracked with guilt. What kind of son was I that I had, even for a moment, neglected to mourn?

I also recall the first person I met in those turbulent few weeks who didn’t know my story, who treated me like everyone else and who didn’t say she was sorry for my loss. We had the closest thing to a normal evening, which, at that time, was extraordinary.

In the weeks, months and years ahead, my friend’s daughters will remember the great moments with their father. They will look back at their idyllic childhoods and remember the mom and dad who made that possible.

In the days ahead, however, they will feel a flood of emotions and have a range of thoughts. I hope that they find the kind of peace that comes from appreciating what they had and knowing that, no matter how much they might feel this way, they are not alone and that others share their experiences and care for them.

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Joe Biden has written a book called, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” about one year in his life. A memoir, it deals in part with the illness and death of his elder son, Beau, from brain cancer at the age of 46. I have not read the book. It just came out this past Tuesday, Nov. 14. But the coincidence of the book’s release on the day my husband died at a similarly young age exactly 30 years ago from cancer has connected me to Biden. I know what he went through — the shock, the pain, the hope, the heartbreak, the grief and the end that ultimately comes crashing down into silence. Then he faced the absolute necessity of having to pick up and function because life moves on with every passing day. And we must move on with it because there is no respite for the living.

Biden also writes about his difficult decision not to run for president in the 2016 election and about the foreign crises in Iraq, the Ukraine and Central America as part of his workload during that one year.

“I wanted to write precisely about the crises and dilemmas I faced as they intersected in the moment,” Biden told Philip Galanes in an interview with The New York Times. “I wanted to show that in the ebb and flow of life, nothing is totally separable.”

I know that Biden was lucky to have those other facets to deal with, just as I was lucky to have a huge challenge almost immediately after my husband’s death.

Two of my sons were away in college, the third was a high school senior and the newspaper was being challenged by the Communications Workers of America to unionize. A reporter on my staff, who had already made his mark by unionizing the teaching assistants at Stony Brook University, brought the union to my door. He turned his attention to our hometown newspaper, despite the fact that there wasn’t a community newspaper in all of New York state that had a union. Shoestring budgets and multitask jobs preclude coordinated decision making with a union. The CWA was attracted, I guess, because it represented new territory to conquer. The only problem was that community newspapers are not flush with profits and do not have large staffs to join a union. Nonetheless, we had to fight them off for six months, as they handed out pamphlets with all sorts of painful charges to get our staff worked up against the company. The climax came with an appearance before the National Labor Relations Board in a room without air conditioning in Brooklyn on a hot June day. The pickings were turning out to be pretty lean for the CWA, and they backed off.

Throughout the ordeal, I was wildly angry. I wasn’t getting a chance to grieve. Each day I had to rush to the parapets to defend the honor and integrity of the newspaper against what was to me a ridiculously unequal battle. I barely gave any attention to my grieving son who was still at home, nor did I have a chance to pour out my own grief somewhere in a quiet corner. But I did realize how fortunate I was in those who came to my defense. We had absolutely no money to hire a labor lawyer, and we had no idea how to respond. But the newly retired union leader of the Long Island Rail Road came into my office and offered his help.

Harold Pryor was the man who had terrified Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R) during contract talks by calling wildcat strikes from his totally loyal followers, directing them to abandon the trains at the nearest station during rush hour. Pryor was living in the area and teaching at Stony Brook University. When he found out what was happening to our newspaper, he thought it was not only unfair but also idiotic. He came to advise me through the thicket of union maneuverings, and he brought with him an experienced lawyer to defend us during the hearing.

It was a script worthy of a movie. Here was this feared union leader facing off against one of the largest unions for the sake of a peanut of a newspaper. Jimmy Stewart would have played his part in the spirit of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And thanks to his aid, we emerged unscathed.

Only after it was all over did I realize that life had thrown me a life preserver, much as it had for Biden, and therefore we hadn’t drowned in our grief.