Fiona’s brows arched as Marcus and Riva came into the bistro. Not wanting Fiona to assume this was a date, Riva quickly explained the unplanned meeting at the library. “We sort of skipped out on grief group today,” she confessed, “and then realized we were both hungry.”
“Hunger and grief?” Fiona shook her head. “’Tis a bad mix for certain.”
After placing their orders and sitting down, Marcus asked Riva about her own experience with Paul. “If you need to talk, I’m a good listener too.”
“Since you shared your story, I’ll tell you a bit of mine. The condensed version. Who knows, it might help me to sort some things out.” She took a deep breath before diving in. “Paul was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, which is the worst kind. He’d never been a smoker, but both his parents smoked like chimneys when he was a child. Anyway, it took us by surprise. He’d seemed in great health and rarely went to the doctor. But he did have some shortness of breath that he attributed to aging. Other than that, he had no pain or symptoms. If he hadn’t gone in to have his heart checked, which was my suggestion due to the shortness of breath, we might not have even known about the cancer.”
“I’ve heard lung cancer can be very stealthy.”
Riva sipped her water, preparing herself to continue. “Anyway, by the time we got his diagnosis, it was similar to Anne’s ... hewas in the final stages of lung cancer. He retired from practicing law, and we threw ourselves into finding the best medical treatment. I was so optimistic. I really thought we could beat it. I even took him to the Mayo Clinic. I thought our insurance would cover the treatment, but it didn’t. Since Paul was self-employed, our insurance was less than stellar. After the first year of doing everything we could to win the battle, we were told it was hopeless ... and our savings were depleted. Short of a miracle, his condition was terminal.”
Marcus grimaced. “I know how hard that was to hear.”
She just nodded. “For the next year, it was all about maintenance. My job was to just take care of him. He got sicker and weaker, and it got harder. I hate to admit it, but it almost felt like my life was ending too. As if, instead of just being put on hold, my life was over. I suppose it might’ve just been exhaustion. As you know, caregiving is tiring.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“It’s weird to think I’ve never really told anyone this part of my story before, but it really did feel like I was dying. Or maybe I just wanted to die.” She paused as Fiona came over to set down their orders and refill water glasses. And then, more eager to tell her story than to eat, Riva let it spill out, explaining how hard it was to assume all the household responsibilities once he was gone, including the things that Paul used to do.
“The extra work combined with the physical aspects of helping Paul with everything, well, it just seemed to take over our whole world. Hobbies or anything outside of the house fell to the wayside. Frankly, even if I had the time, I didn’t have the energy. Other than Laurel, who kept pressing into my shrinking world, bless her heart, I quit socializing altogether.” She sighed. “To be honest, I feel like I sort of did die then.”
“You still feel like that?”
She shrugged. “I think I sometimes do. Like the other night, after dinner—with the music and dancing and all—it felt kindof ...surreal. Like I was enjoying myself and then I couldn’t. I just had to get away.”
“I get that. I think we can get stuck in our grief sometimes. Especially if we don’t make a conscious effort to get unstuck.”
She picked up her fork to try her salad, then stopped. “I guess what caught me off guard most of all that night was how angry I felt. I never really believed in the anger stage of grief. Didn’t think I needed to go through it. I couldn’t even relate.” She forked into a cherry tomato. “But I felt angry that night.”
“We all grieve differently, but I got lots of experience with the anger stage unfortunately.” He bit into his roast beef on rye.
She stared curiously at him. “Are you past it?”
He nodded as he chewed. “I think I am, but I guess it could sneak up on me. Kind of like it did on you. But hopefully it’s behind me by now.”
“Well, that’s encouraging.” She took a bite, still mulling over her own unexpected anger issue, wondering how often it would take her by surprise. “I couldn’t really figure out what my anger was about. I mean, it came at me so hard and fast. It was pretty unsettling. And embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” he asked.
“Well, hiding out in the house when you were all outside having such a good time. I felt like a party pooper!”
“Iwascurious where you’d gone, but no one else seemed to notice or mind.”
She wondered if that was supposed to be encouraging but couldn’t help musing that the other women, particularly Kitty, were probably glad to reduce the female population that night.
“Want to know what I’ve learned about anger?” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, then sipped his soda.
“Absolutely.”
“My theory is that most anger is the direct result of feeling a loss of control.” He took another bite.
“So I was angry because of a loss of control? Control of what?”
He swallowed. “Well, when you get right down to it, there is very little—if anything—in this life that we can control. But going through the death of a loved one really seems to drive this home. It did for me. It’s like you do everything you can, practically kill yourself doing it, and they still die. You can’t stop it or control it. And that makes us angry.”
“I get that,” she said, pushing her food around her plate. “But I still don’t know what triggered me that night.”
“Maybe you felt a loss of control in that social situation. Think about it, you’ve taken in all these tenants, some you barely know, and they are living in your home. The home you’ve had to yourself since Paul passed. It’s like you had a little control, but now you have all these roommates ... maybe that feels like a loss of control.”
