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Friday July 30,2010

There Are Places I Remember

by Leandra Walker

It was an informal get together. Several widow/ers who are in contact with each other formed the plan. We'd all meet for lunch, not as a support group, just a group of people with something in common - - the loss of our spouses.

The planning took weeks. Since people would be coming from four states, the plan was to meet somewhere in the middle. The choice was Central Massachusetts, which was fine with me. That's where I live and would be very convenient.

And then they chose the restaurant. It's less than a half-mile from the hospital where John died.

I had eaten many meals in that restaurant during John's several hospital stays. I'd even taken friends and family members there while John was in the ICU, when they had come up to say goodbye. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to walk into that restaurant again.

My therapist and I had discussed this last February when I had an attack of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (See PTSD: Grief's Powerful Weapon). She told me that the only way to overcome the symptoms is to desensitize yourself by exposure to whatever triggers the physical reaction.

I decided to kill several birds with one stone. As I prepared to join the group for lunch, I determined that I could take the long way around to the restaurant and make myself drive past the hospital where John died and the funeral home where I last saw his body before cremation.

Driving down Plantation Street in Worcester, I found myself shaking behind the wheel. I slowed as I passed first the funeral home, then the hospital. I almost didn't recognize UMass Medical Center, as they had built a whole new Cancer Research Center since I'd been there last, right in front of the building where John died. It was less traumatic than I thought it would be.

When I got to the restaurant, a different kind of trepidation came over me. I've never been in a group of widowers before. Would the afternoon be one of sadness? Could I handle that in a place where I'd cried so many times before?

In fact, it was a wonderful afternoon. We talked about the sad things, but we also commiserated about the idiots who tell us how to live our lives without ever having walked this grief journey themselves. We laughed about the funny things our spouses did, compared notes and found we all had so much in common. The lunch lasted three and a half hours, because no one wanted to leave.

When it was over, I thought about the other places I had avoided but had overcome the fear. One was the local community hospital. I had to attend a meeting there, but that was where they took John first when I called 911, before transferring him to the larger hospital. He'd spent months in that hospital off and on.