Tag Archives: grief

Unprepared for Regret, Part II: Valentine’s Day

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(To read the first entry in this occasional series, see Unprepared for Regret.)

Valentine’s Day is special for many couples, but for my wife Jill and me it was particularly noteworthy because it marked the beginning of our serious relationship.

We had met in the Fall of 1979, when I was a sophomore and she was a freshman at Winyah High School in Georgetown, SC. She and her friend Evelyn were equipment managers for the football team, and I first met them when I stood at the counter to get my shoulder pads and helmet. It was the closest I’ve come to “love at first sight,” but she didn’t have quite the same reaction.

In the Spring of 1980, we ran track together. I first held her hand on one of the bus rides home from a meet, and I used to stand on the infield and “catch” her when she finished her races. I came to like her very much — truth to tell, I fell in love with her very quickly — and she liked me, too … but not too much later she told me she only wanted to be friends.


With Jill on the front steps of Winyah High School in the Spring of 1980 — before she told me she just wanted to be friends.

By the Fall of 1981, we were still friends. We had both had other relationships that hadn’t worked out, and I had seen her once over the summer and jokingly told her that if five years went by and neither of us married anyone then we should just marry each other. I think she laughed at the idea … but I don’t have much memory for the details of events in my life, so I can’t be sure. Anyway, that Fall Jill agreed to let me sponsor her for Homecoming, and to take her to a Halloween party and a football awards banquet, but we were not “dating” in any serious sense.

And then came Valentine’s Day of 1982.

We both went separately to the dance in the high school gymnasium, and late in the evening I asked her to dance a slow dance with me. I was never a very good dancer, but Jill was — I was always intimidated when dancing with her, and might not have had the courage to ask her if I hadn’t been just a little bit drunk (and, yes, I admit that I was a few months shy of the then-legal age of 18).

During that slow dance, possibly fueled by that same liquid courage, I said something along the lines of, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think I will always love you.”

And, to my surprise and delight, Jill said she loved me, too.

I feel certain that we kissed, and I wish I could remember it. A short time later, she had to catch a ride with her friends back to her house, and I recall being a bit unsure that she had really said she loved me. I had wanted to hear her say it for so long, I couldn’t quite believe it was real. But it was.

Ten weeks later we went to my Senior Prom together.


With Jill at my Senior Prom in May 1982.

We were married three years after that. We had some ups and downs, before and during, but our marriage lasted 34 years and change — and every Valentine’s Day was special because they marked the first time we both admitted (or, agreed) that we loved one another.

___

Postscript:

About two months after Jill died, I went home to Georgetown and walked our puppy around some of our old haunts. At one point I stood in front of the old, run-down, tawdry gym and thought about that Valentine’s dance. I wished for a clearer memory of that night — of the song we danced to, of what she wore, of the smell of her perfume, of her face in the low light — but my brain is built to remember what happened more than how it happened.

That defect in my memory — that it is “declarative” rather than “episodic” — is something I deeply regret, something I was unprepared to deal with in terms of grief, and something I dearly wish I could overcome — because I want to remember Jill more clearly, and to recall more vividly the good times we had. But I can’t … and as a result my life without her is sadder and more empty than it might otherwise be.

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Updated Grief Condition Model

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Yesterday I laid out a five-point “Grief Condition” model, but with the caveat that it could stand to be adjusted somewhat. It didn’t take long to come up with a more flexible version that allows for a wider range of emotional responses.

The first version only allowed for tears, but grief comes with more than just sadness. This version doesn’t specify any single response, so it allows for other emotions such as anger, guilt, loneliness, etc., as follows:

  • GRIEFCON 5: “Normal” life, with grief (rare emotional reactions, prompted by especially poignant reminders or memories)
  • GRIEFCON 4: “Normal” grief, with life (occasional emotional reactions, at ordinarily benign reminders)
  • GRIEFCON 3: Significant grief (unexpected emotional reactions, at even happy reminders)
  • GRIEFCON 2: Overwhelming grief (frequent emotional reactions, approaching outbursts, with little prompting)
  • GRIEFCON 1: Maximum grief (nearly constant, strong emotional outbursts, brought on by next to nothing)

And as before, beyond GRIEFCON 1 would be nuclear grief: total war with myself, deep despair, characterized by constant, crushing floods of emotion.

It’s still not a perfect model, but it may be useful. And, for the record, today I think I’m still in GRIEFCON 3.

___

Related posts:
– Grief Condition Three (GRIEFCON 3)
– Unprepared for Regret

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Grief Condition Three (GRIEFCON 3)

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The U.S. military uses the “Defense Condition” graduated scale to describe our readiness to fight a nuclear war. The DEFCON scale became an integral part of my everyday life when I was an Emergency Actions officer at U.S. Strategic Command, as part of the 55th Mobile Command and Control Squadron at Offutt AFB, Nebraska.

Yesterday, I wondered whether a “Grief Condition” — GRIEFCON — graduated scale might serve to describe the state of my grief on a day-to-day basis.

The DEFCON scale is a five-point scale as follows (from Wikipedia):

  • DEFCON 5: Normal readiness (lowest state)
  • DEFCON 4: Above normal readiness (increased intelligence & security)
  • DEFCON 3: Air Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes (increased force readiness)
  • DEFCON 2: Armed forces ready to deploy & engage in < 6 hours (next step to nuclear war)
  • DEFCON 1: Maximum readiness (nuclear war is imminent) or immediate response (nuclear war has already started)


Our family posing with the kind of truck I drove as part of the 55 MCCS, where the DEFCON scale was a critical part of my work. (Offutt AFB, 1994)

My GRIEFCON scale would run in a similar fashion. Here’s my first cut:

  • GRIEFCON 5: “Normal” life, with grief (rare tears, prompted by especially poignant reminders or memories)
  • GRIEFCON 4: “Normal” grief, with life (unexpected tears, at ordinarily benign reminders)
  • GRIEFCON 3: Significant grief (occasional tears, at even happy reminders)
  • GRIEFCON 2: Overwhelming grief (frequent tears, with little prompting)
  • GRIEFCON 1: Maximum grief (nearly constant tears, brought on by nothing)

And at the last, beyond GRIEFCON 1, would be nuclear grief: total war with myself, characterized by constant tears with crushing sadness.

It’s not a perfect model, of course, and it could bear some adjustment — but it’s a starting point.

And, as the title says, today I’m in GRIEFCON 3. And I’m just taking it day-by-day.

___
Related post: “Unprepared for Regret”

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Unprepared for Regret

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Three months ago today, my wife, my high school sweetheart, Jill Rinehart, died suddenly and unexpectedly next to me in the bed. I tried to revive her, but neither I nor the EMS responders who came when I called 911 were able to bring her back.

We had been married thirty-four years, four months, and eighteen days. We had been together “officially” as a couple for over thirty-seven years, and had actually known each other for over 40 years.

I was not prepared to lose her on that day or in that way.

She had been concerned about surgery she was scheduled to have a few days later, and she gave me some indication that she thought something might happen during the surgery or when she was in the hospital. But she didn’t seem too concerned that Friday night. We talked about our plans to get up the next morning and go to breakfast together (as we did every Saturday), and she made all the preparations for the art class she was scheduled to teach. We even discussed the plan for church that Sunday.

Then, against all our expectations, she was gone. I was unprepared, mentally or emotionally, for her loss.

I don’t mind admitting that I was unprepared emotionally. There’s an element of surprise and shock built into all of this, because even though we vow to love and honor and cherish “’til death do us part” we don’t often think much about death parting us. Or, at least in our case, when we talked about it our reasonable assumption was that I would go first. But, even so (or maybe because of that assumption), Jill and I didn’t discuss it in enough detail to say that either one of us was prepared for it. It was always something that we assumed would be “yet to come,” something in the future, something that we had time to prepare for and plan for and deal with.

But in the midst of my unpreparedness, I was surprised by an avalanche of guilt and regret that buried me, and that I’m still digging my way out from under. I did not expect it, and it has choked me and frozen me in my grief.

For instance, I was unprepared for the guilt I would feel: guilt that I was unable to help her adequately the night she died. I may go into more detail about that in a future blog post, but for now suffice it to say that I hate myself, and probably always will, for every second that I hesitated after waking up to what I now know was her last breath.

But in addition to that guilt, that doubt, that self-recrimination — which my doctor and some emergency medical technician friends insist I need not carry — I have encountered powerful regrets for which I was equally unprepared. Unexpected and intractable regrets …

  • for times that I grew so comfortable in our marriage and our home life and our relationship that I took her for granted, and didn’t tell her or show her how deeply I loved her and how much she meant to me
  • for things I said or did that bothered her, or hurt her
  • for things I failed to do or things I didn’t say that could have made her life — or just one day or just one hour of her life — more comfortable or more bearable or happier
  • for every opportunity I missed to spend an extra hour with her, whether sitting on the couch or the front porch talking, or walking in the woods or on the beach under the moonlight
  • for things I’ve learned about that I didn’t know, that at times during our marriage she was unhappy or dissatisfied or depressed: specifically, for not having clearer vision and more wisdom to see what was wrong and know how to help; for being self-absorbed and ignorant … not uncaring or unconcerned, really, but stupidly blind to her needs


(Jill at Duke Gardens.)

 

So, yes, I was unprepared for regret in Jill’s passing. Some people have told me that confronting regrets like this is a normal part of grief, and maybe it is — the “unfinished business” of life, as one dear friend put it — but that doesn’t negate the fact that I had never considered it and was not ready to handle it.

I’m not sure I’m ready to handle it even now. But I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter.

If at this point I can offer any caution to you as you navigate in and through your own relationships, it’s this: do what you can, while you can, to let your beloved know how very much they mean to you. Let them know how sorry you are for those things you might have done (or that you meant to do but didn’t), for any ways in which you may have hurt them or neglected them. And let them know how ready you are to forgive them for anything they may have done, even unknowingly, that hurt you.

Keep the slate of your relationship as clean as possible for as long as possible. Erase any negativity from it as often as you can. And, so far as it is in your power to do so, only write on that slate affirmations and encouragement and praise and expressions of love. So that when — not if, but when, and hopefully many years in the future — death parts you, you are not burdened with so many regrets as I have been.

___
P.S. If you’re interested, you can read Jill’s obituary here.

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