Don’t judge harshly what you cannot understand.
My back was hunched with my face buried in the laptop screen. My right leg shook violently, in sync with the disapproving motion of my head. Why does she do this all the time? Is there no getting through to her?
The anger burned inside, pushing at the boundaries of my body, wanting nothing more than to be free. I made no attempt to calm it. I just waited. My eyes moved from the screen to the front door and back again. Impatiently waiting for her to come back home. To walk through the door and right into my disappointment.
Finally, Ariana side-stepped through the door, carrying more bags than her hands should have been able to hold. The bags were larger than grocery bags, nearly double the size. Presumably filled with all the things we didn’t need—according to me, anyway.
“Hey babe, how’s it going?” she asked.
“What did you buy now? Do you know you went over budget again? Why? Why can’t you just spend what we have? Check the app. It isn’t that hard. I don’t know how I could make it any easier.” My lecture continued on.
No patience.
No curiosity.
Only frustration and anger.
Ariana put the bags down and, without a word, walked calmly to the chair in front of me. I stood up, mid-lecture, and began pacing the floor. Every few words, my finger pointed in her direction. I didn’t even see her anymore. I was fully captured in the sound of my own voice and the certainty that I was doing the right thing.
I didn’t pause for her reaction. I gave no thought to how my words might be landing with Ariana.
We were three years into our new life with cancer. A cancer that slowly consumed not only her body, but our relationship. It leeched and wormed its way into every part of our lives. It challenged us and pushed us to the edges of our capabilities.
Capabilities that we spent a decade building. Communication that went beyond words. A life we continuously tended to—one that bloomed with unimaginable beauty. We learned how to love each other. We figured out how to live together, and above all, we learned how to accept each other.
We lived and breathed together. We were fully in sync.
Until cancer.
The verbal assault continued, and as she sat on the chair, her eyes began to tear. A rarity with Ariana. And yet, she remained silent, patiently waiting for my anger to subside, like waiting for a child to tire out.
She waited for me to notice.
Her silence broke. “Everyone else gets to make mistakes. They get to just live their life expecting to grow old. But I don’t. I’m dying. And this one thing lets me feel normal. Like I can still live like everyone else. I want to make mistakes. To have some area of my life not be so constrained. I have to watch what I eat. Go to a million appointments. Live my life ruled by doctors and medicine. I just want this one thing to not matter as my life depends on it.”
My hands fell to the chair in front of me. Supporting my weight. I slowly shuffled around and sat down. I took a deep breath and felt all the shame, embarrassment, and realization settle in. What a fool I am.
Ariana was breaking before me. A woman that I deeply loved and dedicated my life to. The tears that rolled down her face, hitting her shoelaces below, were created with my words and my foolish sense of superiority.
I doubled over in pain. My elbows hit the table.
“I am so sorry, love. I had no idea you felt that way. I am so sorry for yelling and being such an asshole. I get scared that we won’t have enough. That you’ll die and I’m going to be left to care for the kids with nothing. I’m so afraid I won’t be able to hold down a job when you’re gone. I don’t know how I will live without you. I took it out on you. It’s not fair.” I apologized.
I found my stability again, got up, walked over to Ariana, and held her.
This moment still haunts me. All the moments I f*cked up with her. Cancer is more insidious than just infecting a body. It consumes relationships, marriages, and households.
Treatment can only take care of the body, but the downstream effects need so much more.
Every three months we waited for new results from Ariana’s scans. And every three months we had to redefine our marriage. To figure out life together—again. It became our norm.
Ariana’s cancer not only threatened my best friend, but it threatened the single most important relationship in my life. It was relentless and at times overtook any energy we had left.
I remained convinced our marriage remained intact and healthy because of the communication we had built before. All the long nights figuring out how to be a couple and parents while we were still growing into adults.
I shudder to think what would have happened without that stable foundation.
Grief is not just the loss of life.
The relationship that ended.
The job that slipped away.
The parent who is succumbing to dementia.
Grief is also the anticipation of loss.
We shame someone for “not being able to handle it” and ridicule the person’s decisions. We judge so harshly with little regard to what is happening in their life. We expect them to be making the “sane” choices we believe we would make.
Our mistake is filtering their actions through our current circumstances—one that may not be fraught with grief, pain, and fear.
There are genuinely wrong choices to make in life. The morally abhorrent choices.
Setting those aside, we mustn’t shame ourselves or others for their perceived failure in grief.
What matters is recognizing the failure, then learning, communicating, and repairing.
And finally, growth.
The shame only serves to weigh us down. So let it do its job—to signal that you have acted out of character—and then move on.
It is wisdom over ego. Perseverance over suffering.
With Love,
CJ
P.S. If you are struggling yourself with grief, whether it is in anticipation of something or anything else, I am here to support you. It is what I do. Don’t go it alone.