The Widower’s Rant: Surfin' Safari

Let's go surfin' now

Everybody's learnin' how

Come on and safari with me

Dogs love routines. The morning is the best part of their day. All the good stuff happens. I’m awake! My People are here! We get to go outside and sniff around. Food! I love my dog food. Have we had this before?!?! It’s so delicious. Walkies! I get to go for a walk and sniff everything. Now I’m back, and I get to nap! Perfect day! To know the unbridled enthusiasm that a dog has for each day anew is to know pure happiness and joy.

Most people like routines, too. We loved our routines, silly as they might sound when I write them down. I’ve already mentioned that Beth woke up happy. Not too different than her beloved doggies. As Beth’s health began to unwind in early 2024, walking the dogs became difficult. I think this hurt her more than anything else she silently suffered. With time, they adapted, and they both always enjoyed their time in the backyard. Occasionally, she would be able to take Ronin for a short walk. I know that it meant the world to her. A few days before she died, she surprised both of us by being able to take both dogs on short walks. It had been months since she did that, and I know it made her so happy. In retrospect, I’m grateful she had that last walk to once again enjoy that part of her routine she treasured.

Despite the health issues, other routines did not change much. Aside from the odd hospitalization, tests, and then the weekly course of chemo, the 2nd half of our daily routine was pretty much like it had been for years. I’d come downstairs and start meal prep. We ate watching Jeopardy, a routine we started during Covid times. Before her stamina evaporated, we’d go for a walk around the neighborhood. Since this was usually the third time some people would see her during the day—first with Ronin, then with Holly, and then with me—she’d be asked, “Where are your dogs?” To which she replied it was time for her to take me out for a walk. I tended to make a comment about how much less I barked and rarely pooped in our neighbor’s yards. Hopefully, they appreciated that. Then we’d end up back in our cozy home, play with the dogs in the backyard one last time, then settle down on the couch for a series or the rare movie. I loved this routine. It brought me comfort and joy that every day started with her hustling the doggies outside and ended with us sharing a common experience courtesy of a dozen streaming channels. It sounds so simple, but it was my everything. Our trivial, wonderful, perfect routine. 

Since Beth died, almost nothing in my life has been routine anymore. When I’m up at Tahoe, where I have spent most of my time, I have created a few new routines, but they are so new that they are still malleable. What is routine is my nearly obsessive need to be outside and moving to the point of near exhaustion. I have found a very high correlation between physical activity and reasonable mental health, so move I must. 

The biggest routine I miss now is that in the before times, most hours, and most days, I’d be generally happy. What reason did I possibly have not to be. By all measures, my, no, our life was candidly idyllic. I also tended to wake up happy and enthusiastic to start my day. I couldn’t wait to get upstairs to my office and take my crack at solving the world’s problems. Or at least feel that if I sent enough emails and spent enough time in Zoom meetings, some problems would be solved and others ameliorated. I felt joy, satisfaction, contentment, challenge, enthusiasm, and accomplishment, among other positive emotions, most days.

I’ve never been much of an emotional person. I have shoved down any external evidence of emotion much of my life, befitting my mother’s Japanese stoicism and my father’s puritanical upbringing. My emotionally stunted family has carefully avoided situations where we might “feel the feels” and talking about emotions was not our strong suit. I regret this a bit, but it was the life we happily lived. 

Truthfully, for as long as I can remember, I have become choked up when I hear the National Anthem sung at a sporting event, and they show the players about to enter battle on the field. When soccer players walk onto the pitch holding the hands of children. When human interest stories are highlighted. Listening to a stirring speech or deeply personal interview. Or an emotional scene on the TV. But as I feel the emotions begin to rise in my throat, constricting my breathing, I swallow rapidly, blink a lot, and if tears form, pretend that something is bothering my eye. I’m not sure if Beth noticed sitting next to me on the couch. I doubt it, as her powers of attention and focus were legendary. That’s been my routine for nearly 62 years. Suppress, deny, and ignore complex emotions. But like the lava dome under Yellowstone, I suppose it has been there. Gurgling away.

Things have changed, and how. I am surfing a wave of new emotions daily, hourly, and even within the span of reading a sentence. I have never cried, sobbed, or heaved as frequently, deeply, loudly, and unpredictably over the past 18 weeks as I did in the previous 62 years. I don’t like this new routine, partly because it is not routine and mostly because it’s uncomfortable, and I don't like not knowing when these new unpredictable emotions will surface.  

So, every day, I look at the ocean that is my mind and try to predict the swells and find calm seas. I’m challenged using many effective surfing analogies as I don’t surf. Once, on vacation in Maui, the family took a surfing lesson. I used to windsurf a lot, but that does not help with the surfing analogy deficit I’m experiencing. We watched “100 Foot Wave” on HBO. Good show. It’s not helping me with surfing analogies, unfortunately. 

When I play in the ocean, jumping in the waves and occasionally trying to body surf, I know never to turn my back to the surf. To be vigilant of the big wave that might knock you down. In the waves, the ocean is so powerful that even with your feet beneath you, a wave can toss you about. It’s funny when you are little. I’m sure it’s quite disconcerting to watch a small, 62-year-old bald man get tossed by a wave. 

Waves come in sets until they don’t. Some waves are small, and some are big. Some are Tsunamis. Grief is a lot like that. Typically, the water is placid on a windless day. Then, suddenly and without warning, the waves hit you. Toss you about. But you don’t know from which direction the waves are coming, so it is hard to be vigilant and look for the big wave threatening to knock you down. The odd phrase, lyrics of a song, seeing a photo, or just getting lost in a thought. Bam, tossed about in the surf again. Sand in my pants, salt burning in my sinuses. 

A show we enjoyed watching was “Bondi Rescue.” Beth loved Australia, and the lifeguards were easy to look at. Since they were 7,500 miles away, I wasn’t too threatened. The stories largely centered on ‘The Rip’ and people not listening to common sense advice, getting caught in the Rip, and needing to be rescued. Say, “Ah, she’s caught in the Rip” using an Aussie accent in your head. It’s delightful. As a kid we were taught that if you are caught in a rip current, not to fight the rip, but swim parallel to the shore to get out of the rip and then make your way, exhausted but alive, back to the beach. 

I get caught in rip currents more frequently than I want to admit. So I’ve learned not to fight them but to let them carry me wherever they might be going. Maybe I’ll end up in Bali? Learning not to suppress the emotions I’m feeling has been a big accomplishment and a healthy part of the healing journey. Let the wave wash you out, then surf back into the warm, sandy beach. Don’t fight the rip. Be exhausted but alive. 

I terribly miss my familiar routines. The morning hug and kiss. Asking Beth about her dog walk. Telling her about the trivial things I was thinking and having her listen to me with rapt attention and boundless encouragement. To walk around our neighborhood in the Alexander Valley. To watch shows that made us laugh, think, or just be entertained. The routine that I’ll look over in the morning and see her get out of bed to take the doggies downstairs to begin their happy routine anew. I know that we didn’t take our routines for granted. I could not imagine how badly I would miss them. 

Instead, my new routine is to surf unpredictable waves. The only routine now is that sometimes, I’ll be very sad. The vast majority of the time, I am not. Especially when I’m outside, talking with friends, or having a Zoom call to solve the world’s problems. Being busy is a nice antidote for spending too much time inside my skull ruminating and wondering when the next wave might hit.

Napping did not come easily to me as a younger man. I recall my mom telling me I also rarely napped as a toddler as I was so busy doing things. I may have made that memory up, but it fits the template of my life. Beth was a champion napper. To be curled up in a sunspot, napping, was her favorite routine. Only in the last decade have I embraced the luxury of a good nap. What’s interesting to me is grief wears you out. As active, fit, and healthy as I’m so lucky to be, I get oddly tired at times. My brain is tired of fighting the rip and wants to nap on the beach in a sunspot. So, I do my best to indulge it. Another new routine.

Despite the frankly tragic circumstances that have brought me to this unfamiliar beach, it’s an interesting gift to have the time and curiosity to be this introspective. To learn about this new character I’m becoming. A dear friend shared this quote with me:

- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“you will never be the same” particularly speaks to me. I think I’ve come to grips with this. There’s always going to be a hole. I’m grounded enough in reality to know I can’t fill that wonderful, perfect puzzle piece of a hole with another one. Searching for the unicorn of a matching puzzle piece, thinking that it will restore my routines to the before times, is futile. But I believe I have room in my life and in my heart to grow and adapt and become a better version of myself - even with the sadness that comes from a hole that will never be filled. Ugh. Made myself cry writing that.  

That’s the journey. To internalize that you can’t be the same. But with luck, work, time, and the incredible support of family and friends, I can hope to become a better version of myself. Some of the hard corners have been sanded off, and I’ve learned new depths of gratitude and empathy. Step by step, day by day. Head high, hole in heart, to boldly go forward. 

When I was presented with my lifetime membership to The Widower’s Club, the stupidest of clubs, the one without decoder ring or cape, they didn’t mention that it was a portal to a different person. But that became obvious quickly. I could choose to dwell, to fight the rip, to rage against the machine of inescapable change. Or I can learn to surf.

Thanks for coming along to safari with me. 

I miss you Beth. I love you forever.

Donald