No, what I was frightened about was my ability to be a single parent.
Amy and I had countless conversations about this very topic in her final weeks. It is one of the gifts I feel I received from having the time to be with her at the end stage of her life. Not everyone is as fortunate—if the loss is sudden and unexpected, for example. In those super-intimate moments, I would ask Amy how I could be the best parent in her absence. How could I handle the milestones and the spaces in between? Amy would think about it long and hard and then say with confidence, “You are an amazing dad. You have such a special relationship with each one of the kids. You don’t need to think too hard about it. They love and respect you.” She emphasized that I “could do it.” Honestly, I am unsure if I could have without her clear affirmation that we all would be okay. Still, Amy was so incredibly gifted at having that “mother wit.” As dudes, we sometimes just don’t get it.
That is not meant to be a sexist statement. I feel as if I was incredibly involved and competent at a lot of child-rearing issues. But there’s something special, even irreplaceable, about a mother-child relationship. Period. There were college graduations coming up. I was destroyed, imagining trying to plan the right celebrations, and counsel and guide our kids through career decisions and job searches. Weddings? Come on. How could Amy not be here for those? How could I navigate them alone? Amy always knew what to say, when to hug, when to give space, when to be firm, and when to simply love like only a mother can. Now she was gone, and I was still here, feeling like I could never begin to make up the difference.
My first major single-parenting test arrived when my son Miles’s graduation came along in May 2017. We were going to Atlanta for the graduation. Now, there was no typical AKR list to follow. All of the details were on me. It is not that this was a hard thing to pull together, but I was not used to having all of this fall on me. Booking flights and hotels. Making fun dinner reservations. Writing creative cards, planning a good toast—okay, that was my specialty—and bringing together my mother-in-law and my mom.
Amy had some forethought here as well. Our family has a tradition of making signs and posting them all over the kitchen at significant moments in our lives, big and small. Examples include birthdays, welcome-home signs, first and last day of school, and so forth. In her final months, she made signs for Miles’s graduation. I brought them with me. They were not the typical witty, word-punny sorts that Amy usually made, but the significance of the moment was clear. This added an entirely different layer of emotion to an already sentimental affair.
In the end, the weekend was a mixture of this overwhelming emotion and the culmination of four intense years for our middle child. Not many kids his age had to struggle with the hardship of losing a parent while staying on course to get a well-earned degree in a complex subject. Mixed in with the sadness of Amy’s absence were moments of pure joy and pride as I watched my son receive his diploma in his cap and gown.
Miles’s graduation was difficult in so many ways, but it wasn’t until it was over that the bottom really dropped out. That was when I started having panic attacks.
I would have random periods in the day when my heart started to beat in a forceful way that caused me to struggle to catch my breath. The first time it happened, I thought it was something physical, as in a cardiac issue. I do not have a specific memory of an exact trigger that brought on this feeling, but I mention it because after a major loss you have to expect the unexpected, both physically and emotionally. So much of this new life was a presentation of unexpected experiences and challenges. There was a gap in my heart, in my bed, and in my thoughts.
When it started to occur more frequently, never at the same time of day, I talked to my therapist about it. I remember clearly sitting on her couch and having the feeling come up in her office. By then, I thought I was having some anxiety. I wondered if this was a normal reaction to grief. She assured me that many emotional responses manifest themselves in physical characteristics. She did, however, encourage me to see my doctor.
And that’s how I found myself in my doctor’s office on May 11, 2017, taking a stress test. Be careful what you say to your doctor. He had no choice but to order the test. I got wired up and did my turn on the treadmill. I passed with flying colors. The mere comfort of knowing I was not having a heart attack surely made the symptoms recede. I did not have another incident.
Still, the episode lingered in its own way. It marked the first time I truly understood just how complicated and profound the layers surrounding loss can be, not just our internal responses but our bodies’ behaviors as well. This revelation was an incredibly powerful one: loss has emotional and physical components that one has no control over. To successfully navigate this new landscape, I would have to understand that—the sooner, the better.
12
Refueling Mind and Body
Life is strange. You keep moving and keep moving. Before you know it, you look back and think, “What was that?”
—Joe Rogan
The panic attacks were eye-opening on so many levels, and perhaps chief among them was the realization that before I could do anything else with my life, I had to start taking better care of myself.
For the two years I was taking care of Amy, and for months after she died, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I thought I was, but in truth, I’d lost a lot of weight, stopped exercising, and generally wasn’t caring for myself. Health, wellness, nutrition, and exercise had been major priorities for Amy and me throughout our marriage, and we passed those priorities along to our children.
It’s never been in me to sit back with my feet up and wait for things to happen. It’s my nature to be active, to be a participant and appreciate that I have been born into a certain privilege in this world, but also that I have to earn my place in it. Almost to try to reconnect with that man Amy married, the man I’d lost track of, I did what she would have done and made a list of the jobs I’d gone out and found from the time I was a boy:
Age 8—Newspaper route
Age 11—Neighborhood hardware store
Age 13—Neighborhood pharmacy
High school—Health club/photography business entrepreneur/production assistant/movie theater/law office clerk
College—Short-order cook/window washer/assistant to member of Parliament
Law school—Bartender/law clerk
I was ready to dive back into being a participant again.
Starting therapy had been a crucial first step.
Then, knowing perfectly well from many years of experience that yoga makes differences that only start with the body, I headed to a yoga studio near my house, where I took up a method of exercise called “sculpt.” It’s a combination of weights, yoga, and cardio, and I was drawn to it because of its intensity and its connection to yoga. I had heard how difficult the classes were, and wanted to try it out. The workout was like nothing I had ever experienced—super intense, very sweaty, and, with the right teacher, a very inspiring hour and a half.
Amy, by the way, would have hated it, not because of the intensity of the workout but because she HATED group exercise. That is why we did ashtanga yoga for many years—it has a set series of poses that never change no matter where you are in the world, and it can be done in private or a group setting. If I was to do a spinning class, or any other group class, she would encourage me. But the beat of loud music, all of it, made her cringe; and the mere suggestion from the teacher to “Keep it up, you can do it!” or “You are strong, you can do anything if you put your mind to it!” made her absolutely crazy.