Swimming In Quicksand: A Daily Journal Of Surviving Grief

As the frenzy of tributes to Tim Russert begins to calm down, I find myself thinking more of his widow, Maureen Orth, and their son, Luke Russert. I know the frenzy has been good for them, as will the wake today and the funeral and memorial service on Wednesday. It's the busyness that will get them through this week. The hard part comes when the busyness stops.

I remember clearly the immediate days and weeks after Howard's sudden death. The shock lingered, like an echo. It would go and come and go. It would take the form of acceptance and then just as suddenly turn to disbelief. The worst parts were the troughs of unbearable loss. The yearning would shatter me. I'd collapse at night, exhausted by my grief, and then wake in the morning, momentarily refreshed, until it hit -- this was not going away. My life would be forever changed. It was real. He was gone. No matter what I did or thought or hoped or cried for, he was gone. The emptiness was tangible. It was an abyss. The solid foundation of my existence had collapsed beneath my feet. I was in free fall. Beside me was a five-year-old boy, who was shattered in a different way, and his strange questions and innocent grief compounded mine. He didn't understand what happened. He had little boy questions. "Can we die, too, and be with Daddy?" I'd compose myself to be his rock at bedtime, and then he would cry and I would come apart again. When he was finally asleep, I would go to "our" bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed and stare, still as a stone. Fogged in. Or I would get in the shower, crumpled in a ball on its porcelain floor, and sob under the cleansing wash of water.

The jags of crying came like rogue waves. I cried so hard. The tears came from my head, my stomach, my feet, my fingers. I've never known such purging. Then, remarkably, I'd be better.
There were responsibilities to face: finding money to live on, the bureaucratic red tape of death, my full-time job at CNN, being handed my husband's business, the IRS, the simple maintenance of our existence. These were reality and, facing them alone, they overwhelmed. At the low points I thought it would be easiest to pull the curtains in my bedroom and stay in the darkness; not try to regain equilibrium in the world out there, not try to keep going. But that wasn't in my nature, and I had a little boy who needed me to get up each day and survive. Finding my way in the world was cruel, unfair, painful. There were kindnesses, but there were more rude awakenings. I was vulnerable and clueless. I yearned for a strong shoulder, to be held by a man, protected, pampered and rescued, even kissed, but he wasn't there.

For a while I coasted on my past life. I was a bird that had been shot out of the sky, still in forward motion, unaware my wings had no more flight in them. I couldn't see the coming fall to earth.

Friends were good and helpful and critically important. They were my distraction, my crutch, my therapy. The best ones never dropped me. I felt still married for the longest time. In my mind I was a married woman whose husband simply wasn't present. The married friends kept me in the club for a while, but it's hard work, and slowly they pulled away. I'd become a "one" and that upsets the balance. It's just a fact. When it hits that you're really no longer one of them, the moment is profound. With a young child I still had the daytime playdates, the weeknight "girls' night out," the birthday parties and school events, but the weekends were like being shot into outer space. Silence. The phone stopped ringing at 6 p.m. Friday and didn't sound again until Monday at 10 a.m. That's when I rejoined the club, but on a limited membership.

I've often thought about what's served as a defining symbol of "life after" the loss of my husband. I have one, but it's peculiar. It's that moment on a Friday or Saturday night when I'm walking alone or walking the dog and stop to cross at the corner and there's a car at the stop sign, and in it is a man and woman, husband and wife, a couple, dressed for a party or dinner out, and they are alone together and often silent, but it's a very married, connected, secure and smug moment, and I can taste it and smell it and feel it and want it back so badly. Within me, it's a wisp of madness. And then they drive on and I cross the street and snap out of it. But hey. We move on. We survive. I got this email yesterday out of the blue from a woman who worked with me at CNN: "I remember when your husband died and I remember seeing you in the Bureau one day afterwards. You were very sad and looked empty. I felt for you. You look beautiful and happy in all of your pictures now! Good for you!!"

I hope that's true.

Comments

[kirkland]

What a beautifully done article. Yes, Carol. You have beautifully nailed the unique excruciating kinetic thing that grief is. I looked at Maureen Russert with the same fears or forboding of what she has ahead of her. There are multiple losses as you mentioned. Not just friends but cherished tempos , ideas, hopes. Grieving the loss of someone who you deeply loved separates the women from the girls, so to speak. My hope for Maureen is that she has in her circle a few of the initiated. Those who have endured the initiation themselves are empathic , intuitive and supportive in a way not possible ( by and large) by those who have not been wounded in this way . It's almost like the last vestiges of the certain narcissism which lingers in us all is excorciated when we lose someone that we love deeply. We begin to heal by respecting not only how deep our loss is and by wading into it and finally embracing it. Once this has happened our values are forever changed and once someone knows via experience what a Friday night at 9 pm is like, the particular and striking quiet , the banishment by well meaning but insensitive friends -- it becomes impossible to let a woman or man who you know and care about suffer this - and you become a better friend , a better person. However small a comfort.
Thank You for such a well articulated piece.

[LittleMissFancy]

Thank you very much for this Carol. I thought of you and this post when I saw Maureen Orth's face today. I felt sorry for her as if she was a child struck down by a horrible fate. Little things like how her makeup was so nicely applied in the middle of all that grief etched on her face. I admire that. Just the fact that she was able to look so nice anyway. And how alone she looked and how it didn't help that she is a successful journalist and a Washington media insider and all that. For now she's just miserable and her summer is ruined and her life will never be the same and how she could have had her husband 20 more years. That's just what I thought. I have no idea if it's true. And nothing against Joan Didion but in a way I was more moved by your short post than by her entire book.

[joelaf]

wow, change the names and genders (minus a child), and this has been my experience of the last six months. I'm sorry you have gone through it, but i'm reassured by the thought that what i'm going through is not unique. Thank you for sharing this.

[repearwo]

I try to find hope, but there is so little in this self-absorbed indulgent culture. There are many ways to lose a loved one, death is only one. It is just the most permanent.

Most people in this world have death as a constant threat and companion. The multitude of people slaughtered by the product of death that the US exprts to the rest of the world all have feeling and grief. They just do not have the luxury of wallowing in it. The concerns of survival in a world of violence trump their sense of loss.

Stavation, disease from the poisoning of their environment, and the violence of constant political turmoil fosted and perpetuated by Corporate America is all most of the world has time to deal with.

The grief that I deal with is the future grief for the people I love. I will dead soon, but they will have to deal with this century in which the US will become more and more like the rest of the world.

The best way to deal with grief is to do something positive, to celebrate life. A good start would be to recognize the misery that we complicitly spread across across the world and do something to slow it down. A good start would be to start resisting the anesthetics of the media and take control of our lives and our country from the war profiteers and oil companies.

[hglassberg]

The Institute would like to refer everyone to The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, in which she discovered a means whereby grief could be turned into financial security. While not everyone can write a book about the loss of a loved one, (think of the Iraqis: even if an Iraqi did write one, who's left to read it?), each book and shared experience can help the rest of us get on with his (or her) life. Again, while it 's a shame so many Iraqis die suddenly, Iraqis as a whole have had plenty of time to get used to sudden death--whereas we Americans, who expected to see Tim Russert for the next twenty years and had no reason to believe we wouldn't, without books and grief counselling lack a context for such a shattering event.

Yours respectfully

The Playdo Institute,
Handel Glassberg, President

[marthlois]

Such a wonderful thing you did in writing this article, Carol. I'm quite sure that people experiencing such losses are helped by the gentle spirit and stories of folks like you who have experienced such grief and can help them identify the road map that will change daily/hourly. After reading about your experience, I realize why grieving groups are so vitally important in the process. I lost my Father suddenly when I was twelve - he was 51. I wish I had a support group then. I am now 59 and could still use one very often. Only way out is through apparently.
I'm terribly sorry about your profound loss, Carol. I hope that Maureen and Luke are able to surround themselves with many people like you - who can offer the empathy and support so desperately needed.
I wish you well - thank you.

[NABNYC]

We have this unfortunate tendency in recent years to turn the death of privileged white men into an occasion of unrivaled historical significance, with the bodies transported from place to place, drug to this church and flown to that birthplace, lavish public gatherings of people (almost throwing themselves onto the funeral fire) prostrating themselves in grief, insisting life will not go on and will never be the same, with public demands that the dead man be immediately named a saint, and lavish crowds post-funeral looking skyward certain this man will arise and sit-eth on the right hand of you-know-who.

I'm sorry Tim Russert is dead, particularly at such a young age. But I also can't help but notice this tendency to grossly overstate the significance of rich white American men who die, while completely disregarding the deaths of thousands or millions of people who are not male, not rich, not white, not Americans. It's almost as if the hysterical levels of grief over the death of the "important" men is supposed to serve as a substitute for the fact that for the most part, the people in this country don't really care when other people die -- poor people, nonwhite people, people killed by us, or people simply left to starve because we just don't care.

[Tomlastliberalleft]

For me it was the heartache of how utterly unfair life is. My wife worked hard to stay alive, everyday was a battle and she managed to endure, to suffer, to sustain the three of us, for eight years. Then she was gone. There is no feeling quite like it and nothing you have done before will prepare you for it. My little one was barely seven. How she endured the loss I can only imagine. We both made it somehow, but the sense of loss remains with me to this day. When I heard others complain about the smaller matters of living I found myself voicing aloud just what they should consider, and what they should hold on to with all their might. Some understood, most did not. I stopped doing it after about a year and tried to move on. Made a few mistakes along the way, but survival instinct is an amazing thing, never underestimate your willingness to survive. It is strong indeed. Through the loss the memories, the good ones remain and the bad ones, they only come around when I"m off guard. They to pass on, slowly.