A Journey Through Grief: Notes from a Foreign Country

By James McGee

On the premise that grief is a foreign country for most of us, the author takes the reader on a journey through the grief process as he attempts to move beyond the unexpected death of his wife just as they entered retirement. His personal thoughts on grief are poignant and powerful and the book is like a portable support group that helps readers realize they are not alone in their grieving. Readers will feel the authors pain and will identify with his humanity. The Epilogue to the book offers fifteen lessons that will help readers on their journey through grief.

The book is also a story of a remarkable love relationship. It has laugh-out-loud humor in the midst of pain. Readers will feel they are in the presence of a friend who really knows what grief is like.

* * * * * * *

I simply cannot imagine a better portrayal of love between two people, written through pain, in homage to a loved one. If anyone wants to know about love and the feelings associated with its loss, these pages serve as an example. The book is a roadmap of how to honor the love, revisit it in grief and begin sorting out the feelings of loss . . . This is very heartfelt, powerful material.
Mike Foley, Writers Review.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 5, 2003
• ISBN: 9781410784049

James McGee

James McGee was born into an army family. He was educated in Gibraltar, Germany and Belfast. His career has encompassed banking, bookselling and thirteen years in the airline business. He has also presented book reviews for BBC local radio and several independent stations. In addition to the successful Hawkwood series, he has also written several thrillers. He lives in Somerset.

Book preview

© 2003 by James McGee. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4107-8404-5 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4140-0283-1 (Paperback)

ISBN13: 978-1-4107-8404-9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003110611

IstBooks-rev. 09/05/03

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

NOTES FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY

EPILOGUE: THROUGH GRIEF TO RECOVERY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

Most of us are unprepared for the death of a loved one. Grief is a new experience. There are a number of books available on how to understand and cope with grief. There are others that relate the grief experiences of individuals.

Notes from a Foreign Country, recounts a journey through the grief process. The book is a journal detailing my steps forward and falls backward in attempting to move beyond the unexpected death of my wife just as we entered retirement.

Seven months after my wife’s death, I decided to return to travel and in a tribute to my wife I am able to conclude the journal by writing, Wasn’t I lucky? recognizing that the writing is as much about love as about grief.

The notes were not written for publication but, rather, to help me understand the process I was going through and to leave our children a memory of their mother.

I gave the notes to several of our friends who independently suggested that my personal anecdotes and memories could also be considered universal. They thought that reading my notes could perhaps help others to understand this saddest and most profound human event. They suggested that publication of the notes could show others an evolution through the "Country of Grief’.

For publication, I have added an Epilogue to make explicit some of the steps through grief recoverywhich are only implicit in the text. I hope the lessons I learned from this experience may help others.

The book can be read by those currently in their journey through grief. It can also be read by those who know that one day they, too, will be making the journey. The notes provide some idea of what to expect in the belief that sharing experiences helps us on our way through grief. Those who have already made their own journey can read the book to help them realize the extent of their recovery.

NOTES FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Peg, my wife of 40 years, and mother of our two children, died unexpectedly of a stroke, at age 62 in Roanoke, Virginia on October 12, 2002 while we were on a post-retirement cross-country trip. We visited places we had not been before such as Glacier National Park and the Beartooth Highway in Montana, Door County, Wisconsin, Thousand Islands and Adirondack Park in New York and Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. We also visited places we had previously lived, Birmingham, Michigan and Scarsdale, New York. We visited friends in those places and across the country and spent time with our children in Boston and in Stamford, Connecticut. We had long since named the trip EGAD—the Epic Great

American Drive. We had traveled over 8,000 miles in the 30 days of our trip when we reached Roanoke. Peg’s stroke was on October 8 and she succumbed on October 12, a loss with which I am still unable to come to terms as I write this, five weeks later.

Peg’s memorial service was held in her parish church in California on November 15. Shortly afterward I mentioned to my sister, Marlena, that I could not seem to stop crying even though more than a month had gone by. She encouraged me to start a journal on the Zen-like premise that words which flow down your arm and from your hand to paper are words which do not go around and around in your mind.

I think the premise is flawed: consciously thought words stay with you and are not forgotten.

After five weeks of daily and nightly crying since Peg’s death, I am willing to try a journal.

The notes are random and written as they occurred to me.

November 20, 2002

Last night I was reading A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, one of Peg’s books, which recounts Lewis’ feelings at the time of his wife’s death from cancer. Some thoughts are so right: There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says…I dread the moments when the house is empty.

Lewis is a believer, but in his grief he raises some savage questions about the nature of God. Inreading other grief-oriented books in an effort to understand mine, I learn that anger is a normal part of the grieving process. Lewis is, until he reconciles it in his own mind, angry with God.

But with whom do I, a non-believer, become angry? Certainly not Peg, the stroke was nothing she would have chosen. In fact, at the doors of the Operating Room, where a somewhat risky procedure to remove the clot from the brain was described to her, the ever-so-practical Peg asked the surgeon: What’s the downside? The response that there was a 20% chance of death led to Peg’s response that I’m not ready to die. And at age 62 she wasn’t.

But if I can’t get angry with Peg, with whom do I get angry? I can’t direct the anger at myself since we later learned that she had a small bulge in her heartwhere the blood pooled and clotted rather than circulated. The breaking-away of the clot caused the stroke.

I can’t get angry at the medical or nursing staffs of the hospital to which she was taken. It is a splendid institution (a teaching hospital of the University of Virginia) with extraordinarily kind and compassionate people. I do not believe there was anything lacking in the care provided her.

I can’t get angry with God: I don’t believe there is one.

If I can’t get angry, it means that I have to accept—what is, is.

Then why do I spend so much time crying? And why do I long so much to feel our mutual embrace one more time?

Peg and I have been a part of each other for 40 years. Those years can never be erased from memory nor would I want them to be. So what am I seeking? I suppose some respite from the continuing pain of missing her. I don’t know now how that can ever happen.

I read a quote from Andre Gide, the French writer, who, on the death of his wife, wrote: I have lost the witness to my life. How true. How does one re-establish a life when the witness to 2/3 of it is no longer there?

November 21, 2002

Crying. I can’t stop crying. The question is: Am I crying for Peg or for me? If for Peg, I think mytears honor her. If for me, I disgust myself for my self-pity. Nothing will ever be as it was—do I cry for that or do I rejoice in what was? If the latter, then why all the crying? Oh, Peg, I miss you. I am not responsible for my tears. They come at all hours and for any reason and although you do not know, they are for you.

Malaise engulfs me. Five days ago I made myself a note to polish shoes. Every day I see the note but have yet to polish shoes. The simplest things seem to require more effort than I want to give them.

Thoughts go back to the past. In our first year of marriage we left the snows of Bavaria behind us in March 1963 and drove over the Brenner Pass into the Alto Adige of Italy. On the other side of the Alps the weather was soft, spring-like and pleasant. We stayed in a Gasthaus in the little town of Ora, south of Bolzano, where we had a wonderful evening meal before going up to our rooms with their down comforters. I suppose we made love—we always seemed to be doing that—but it is the next day of which I write.

We drove down to Lago di Garda which is situated in a bowl surrounded by hillsides with grape vines leading down to the blue lake. Approaching lunchtime we stopped and purchased a simple