“I can’t understand,” says Jackie, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I thought it would be so wonderful to return home, to drive through Iowa on our way out west, to look at the old farmhouse, to show my kids where Mom used to live. But it was awful. It was all broken down, dilapidated. Nothing’s the same. I remember the huge trees we used to climb when we were young. They’ve all been cut down.”
Jackie pauses. “One thing’s for sure. Our work together has changed me. I didn’t go numb. I definitely felt my sadness.”
I feel Jackie’s sadness as well. And my own. Although I have no attachment to my childhood New York apartment, the home I lived in on a small lake outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan during my 30s and 40s was my idea of nirvana. Leaving that home was gut-wrenching for me; seeing it again was worse. I felt as though both the house and the landscape had been defiled. The atrium had been ripped out, replaced by a slab of wood covered by a carpet and a piano. And my beautiful weeping cherry tree was no more. I couldn’t stop crying. And that was when my husband was still alive. Now when I return to the Ann Arbor area I can barely tolerate driving by the highway exit to what was once my home.
“But it is a bit silly,” Jackie continues. “I hadn’t been home for over 30 years. What did I expect? It’s not like my family’s there anymore. In fact, my Mom and sister are right here in Florida. Why isn’t this home?”
The question of where’s home. “Well, why isn’t it?”
“It is home. My kids were born here. I feel as though I’ve lived here forever. And, as I said, most of my family is here. And when I talk about Florida right here, right now it does feel like home.”
“And your sadness lifts.”
“Yes, that’s true. But when I think about standing in front of that old farmhouse I feel lost.”
“’Lost.’ That’s a good word. Sounds like you’re saying that you lost your past, lost your home, lost your foundation. As if you were untethered, floating in space.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“And when you think about being here in Florida, about your life being here, you feel reconnected. This is home.”
“Yes. Right.” Jackie pauses. “It feels weird though. Like I’m split. If I think of being here, I feel fine. If I think of being there, I’m overcome with sadness.”
I feel shrouded with sadness myself and worry that my sadness makes me less able to be helpful to Jackie. Our stories aren’t the same. She does feel a sense of home in Florida, she does experience a sense of connection. I try to get outside myself and focus on Jackie’s feelings.
“What about if you think of your childhood memories of that home, of, for example, climbing the trees, playing in the yard?”
“Well, right now it just feels sad. All I feel is the absence. There are no more trees to climb. But I think before I went back to Iowa it used to make me happy to remember. Not that everything in my childhood was so great, but still, I remembered the good times and it made me smile.”
“Perhaps as the memory of your present visit fades, those positive childhood feelings with come back.”
Jackie frowns slightly. “This seems like an odd conversation we’re having. It’s almost like we’ve switched places. I’m the one who’s feeling my sadness and you’re the one who’s trying to get me to stop feeling it.”
I immediately realize the truth of Jackie’s statement. It’s as if the sadness was too much for me, not too much for Jackie; as if I wanted to escape my own sadness, not that Jackie needed to flee hers. “You’re absolutely right, Jackie. I apologize. You were feeling your sadness and doing fine with it.”
“Did you think it would be too much for me? That I’d start going numb again?”
“No, Jackie, I didn’t. Truthfully, this was more about me than about you. I think I’m the one who wanted to get away from my own sadness, so I was thinking I was being helpful by trying to get you away from yours.”
“Wow! I’m sorry I made you sad.”
“You didn’t make me sad, Jackie. We all carry sadness inside us. And when it comes to the surface we need to do just what you’re doing, feel it and feel it until you don’t feel it any more. It’s part of living life.”
“You’re sure you don’t know my husband?” Francis Browning asks again.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I reply. “You made it very clear on the phone that your husband is a psychologist in town and I definitely wouldn’t have agreed to see you if I knew him in any way.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to trust anyone anymore. I can’t even believe I’m willing to see a psychologist myself, but I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy. Sometimes I can’t stop crying. Other times I walk around the house screaming. I can’t believe he’d do this. Why drag me all the way here only to dump me?” Francis digs her fingernails into her hands, her face contorted with rage.
I remain silent.
“I’m from Kansas,” she says. “A Kansas farm girl. People in south Florida laugh at me. They don’t think anyone lives in Kansas. And they don’t believe anyone works a farm. I don’t know where they think their meat and produce come from. Just magically appear in the grocery store I suppose. I hate it here. People are incredibly rude, unfriendly. I never wanted to come here. But Richard loved it when we vacationed here, the sun, the manicured lawns, year-round golf. He kept saying as soon as the girls went off to college we’d move. I thought he was just talking. I went on with my life. It wasn’t a very exciting life, but it was my life. I kept busy with my friends and volunteer work. I never finished college. I thought I was so lucky that someone like Richard would want me. Ha! Guess that’s a joke.”
As Francis talks, I think about how painful my move from Ann Arbor, Michigan to south Florida was, how gut-wrenching it felt to leave my friends, my practice and my home, how alien south Florida seemed. I, too, left because of my husband, but we had a warm, loving relationship and although I sometimes felt angry, I knew the move was necessary. Francis’ story obviously has a different trajectory.
“So the girls went off to college,” Francis continues, “and Richard started making plans to move. I kept asking him if he was sure he wanted to start over again in his fifties, but I
guess I never gave him much of an argument.”
“Did you tell him you didn’t want to move?”
“He knew. But I always did what he wanted. He didn’t expect much opposition from me. So we moved and I hated it as much as I thought I would. Moving into a country club community was my idea of a nightmare. I don’t play golf or tennis. I don’t play cards, which kind of eliminates everything women do in those places. Richard was happy as a clam – working hard, I have to give him that – involved in all kinds of stuff at the club. He started watching his weight, coloring his hair. Wanted me to do all that too. Said I looked dowdy. I should have known. I should have realized he’d start looking elsewhere. I should have tried harder, done what he said.”
“You seem to go from being really angry with your husband to blaming yourself.”
“Yeah. Maybe if I’d done the things he’d asked we’d still be together. But too late now. Moved in with another woman. In the same club of course. Talk about being laughed at. I keep asking myself why I don’t move back to Kansas.”
“That’s a good question. Why don’t you?”
“Partly it’s shame. Not too many people back home know what’s happened. The girls of course, but I haven’t wanted to tell my friends. And I don’t know. I guess it’s silly, but I like Richard to know I’m still around, still watching what he’s doing, like I’m here and you can’t get rid of me so easily.”
“You know, Francis, I’m left wondering what you want for your life. What you’ve ever wanted for your life. You’ve spent your life wrapped around your husband and what he wants. What about you?”
Francis glares at me. “Typical career woman! You sit there talking down to me and telling me about my choices.”
I’m taken aback by Francis’ venom. Am I a stand-in for her husband? For the other woman?
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just don’t know what to do with my rage.”
“You never have to apologize for your feelings here, Francis.”
“I never wanted to be a career woman. I wanted to be a wife and mother and look where that got me. I’m being punished for getting what I wanted. You’re not supposed to want. You’re just supposed to accept whatever God gives you.”
“It’s hard not to want, Francis.”
“Maybe. But wanting and getting burned is no better.”
“I think I’m going to sell my house,” Marybeth says. “It’s just too much for me to handle on my own. I’m sixty-five. It’s enough. Every time I turn around there’s something else going wrong. Last month the air-conditioner went. This month there was a roof leak. I don’t have it in me to keep dealing with it all. When Phil was alive it was different, we could share the burden. Now it just feels overwhelming.”
Tell me about it, I think to myself. I just had carpets pulled out of my house because of water damage. Juggling adjusters, repair men and my work schedule was no mean feat. And, yes, it certainly would have been different if my husband was alive. George was a contractor who once could have done all the work himself and certainly could have expertly supervised everything that needed doing. His absence has felt particularly acute. But I’m not selling my house. No way. “How would it feel to sell your house?” I ask Marybeth.
“Sad,” she answers immediately. “It’s where Phil and I raised our kids. There are so many memories there.” She pauses. “I wish you hadn’t asked me that. I don’t want to feel sad. I don’t want to keep missing Phil. It’s been three years already. I should be over feeling sad.”
I smile inwardly. It’s been over seven years since George died and although I no longer cry every day, I never don’t miss him. “There’s no statute of limitation on feeling sad about the death of someone you love,” I say gently.
“But I don’t want to stay in my house anymore,” Marybeth says emphatically.
“Did you hear me telling you you should stay in your house?” I ask, furrowing my brow.
“You focused on my sadness, rather than on my relief, my moving forward.”
I’m taken aback by Marybeth’s response. Was I being too negative? Was I encouraging Marybeth to stay stuck in the past, rather than, as she said, moving forward? Was I putting my sadness onto her? Suddenly I flash on my overwhelming feelings of sadness and despair when I left my Michigan home for the last time. The pain felt almost unbearable, but I was still leaving. Yes, that’s the problem, Marybeth was confusing feeling and action.
“Well?” she says, impatiently.
“Well?” I think to myself. I had only been lost in thought for a few seconds.
“Can I ask you, Marybeth, what did you feel in the few moments that I was silent?”
“I thought you were pulling that silent therapist technique on me.”
“But what were you feeling?”
“I don’t know. Annoyed, I guess.”
“It’s hard for you to feel sad, Marybeth. It makes you feel “weak” and vulnerable and you want to get away from those feelings. So if I ask how you feel when you think about selling your house and you feel sad, you immediately think you can’t sell your house because you have to get away from your sadness. And if I’m silent for a bit, you feel I’ve left you alone with your sadness which feels intolerable to you, so you become annoyed with me instead. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, but don’t you think I’ve felt enough sadness?”
“I’m not saying you should feel sad, Marybeth. I’m not trying to torture you. I’m saying that when you do feel sad, you need to allow yourself to feel what you feel. You can still do things – such as selling your house – even if selling the house makes you sad. It may also make you feel relieved and content and free. It’s possible to feel more than one feeling at the same time and a feeling doesn’t mean you can’t act despite what you’ll feel.
Marybeth’s eyes fill with tears. “I’m so tired of feeling sad. I don’t want to sell my house. I don’t want Phil to be dead. I sound like a spoiled brat, wanting what I want.”
“You don’t have much compassion for yourself, Marybeth. You don’t sound like a spoiled brat. You sound like a grieving widow who is thinking about yet another loss, your home, and feeling understandably sad about it.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to do it,” Paula says sobbing. “It feels impossible. It’s like I’m killing Robert. But I can’t be killing him because he’s already dead. Why? Why is he dead? Why am I doing this? Why is Karen moving? I can’t. I just can’t. Robert and I lived in that house almost our whole married life. How can I sell it? I just can’t.”
For those of you who read my book, you might remember Paula. She’s the depressed widow I treat during the winters when she leaves her home in Park Slope, Brooklyn to spend time in Florida. Depression has been with Paula most of her life; her husband’s death only made it worse. She hates leaving her home in Brooklyn, even for the winters, venturing south only at the insistence of her daughter, Karen, who, as Paula says, probably had enough of her, and sends her off to her other daughter in Florida. But Karen is now moving to Los Angeles. The plan is for Paula to return north this spring, to put her house on the market and to make a permanent move to south Florida.
“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Paula continues, still weeping. “Maybe I should just stay there by myself. I’ll just have to force myself to get out more, to make friends. I know I’m not very good at that, but I could try,” she says plaintively. “I know that’s not what my daughters want, but it’s my life. I get to do what I want.”
“It is indeed your life, Paula. This is a huge decision for you either way. But I’m glad to hear you say you get to decide for yourself what you want to do.”
“But I can’t. I couldn’t not do what my daughters want. They’d worry about me. I don’t want them to worry about me.”
“I wonder if that’s true, Paula. I suspect you’d kind of like your daughters to worry more about you.”
“That wouldn’t be nice.”
I sigh inwardly. Paula and I have covered this ground more times than I care to remember. “You don’t have to be nice all the time, Paula. And you don’t have to have only good thoughts and good feelings.”
“I guess.” She pauses. “But do you think it’s practical? Do you think I could stay in Brooklyn by myself?”
I smile. “So now you’re going to ask me rather than your daughters what you should do. As you said, you’re an adult. You can make your own decisions. You need to weigh how it would feel to stay in Brooklyn without one of your daughters, as opposed to how it will feel to sell your home.”
“I can’t. I can’t do either one.”
Sadness washes over me. Although Paula’s dependency, indecision and complaints often make working with her difficult for me, this time I feel Paula’s dilemma on a deeply personal level. I remember the tremendous pain I felt about leaving my Michigan home and relocating to south Florida. When my husband’s health tipped the scale in the direction of moving, I remember the questions I asked myself over and over: “How will I walk out of this house for the last time? How can I be making a decision that causes me such intolerable pain?”
Remembering, I say, “With the exception of your husband’s death, leaving your home may well be the most painful loss you’ve ever experienced. It’s nothing to make light of. Home represents your and Robert’s relationship. Home represents a place of safety and security. It’s “home.” Whether home will be enough without Robert or your daughter, no one can decide but you. You often feel very alone. I don’t know if that aloneness will feel intolerable once Karen has moved. That’s something you’ll have to decide. But if you do decide to move, don’t minimize the pain you’ll feel and don’t get angry with yourself for feeling it.”
“I want Robert,” she says beseechingly. “I want Robert to be here and help me.”
“I understand, Paula. I wish he could be here for you, but unfortunately that’s not possible.”
“I hate it when you say that. I know it’s true, of course, but I still hate it.”
“I know, Paula. It feels too real when I say it. But it is important for you to hold onto that reality because when you don’t, you’re surprised again and again that he’s dead and it’s like having to begin mourning for him all over again. And right now you have a huge decision to make and you need to make it knowing that Robert isn’t around to help you.”
“I’ve never done this before,” Susan says anxiously. “But I think my husband will divorce me if I don’t get myself together. Not really, after 40 years of marriage he’s not likely to divorce me, but he’s certainly getting tired of me. Gosh, I’m getting tired of me. I’m sorry, I realize I’m rambling and you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“That’s fine,” I say reassuringly to this attractive, well groomed woman who I guess to be in her sixties. “You can tell your story in whatever way feels best to you.”
“Well, we’re originally from Philadelphia. I taught school there, my husband was a successful businessman. We’d been coming down to Florida for several years during the winters – after I retired from teaching – but then two years ago my husband decided he wanted to move down here permanently. I couldn’t believe it! He was willing to leave our children, our grandchildren and our beautiful home, to come to this place! I don’t know. It’s never appealed to me that much. Too plastic. I hope I’m not offending you.”
I am flooded with more thoughts and feelings than Susan could ever know. I have heard variations of this story countless times since moving to south Florida 20 years ago. Almost invariably the man of the couple wants to move and the woman doesn’t. Almost invariably the husband loves it and has adjusted very well, while the wife continues to long for home.
Those of you who have read my book, Love and Loss, will also know that it is my story, with the added complication of my husband’s health problems pushing us towards a warmer climate. Still, it was definitely not a decision I came to easily. For four consecutive winters I flew weekly between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Key Largo, Florida, continuing to maintain my full-time practice in Ann Arbor. I obsessed and obsessed until my husband’s heart attack when I realized I didn’t want to be separated from him more than absolutely necessary. And so we moved. And I started my practice over in Boca Raton.
Susan continues. “My husband says that it’s been over a year already, that we’ve already gone back several times to visit the children and that my daughter and her family have come to visit us. He wants me to stop moping around. He wants me to start enjoying my retirement, to get out there and make friends. But all the women do here is play cards or golf and I don’t do either. But he’s right, I know I should start making a life for myself here, get involved in politics, volunteer work, something! But I’m not motivated. I feel too sad.”
As Susan speaks I feel myself going back to the time shortly after my move. It was awful. I longed for the friends, patients, and, most especially, my home on the lake that I had left behind. I felt as though I had a wall around me, protecting me from the intensity of the losses, but also disconnecting me from being fully involved in my present life. I had the advantage of my work and a network of professional colleagues, but the wall limited my ability to take in the good that existed around me.
“Tell me about your home in Philadelphia,” I say to Susan.
Tears immediately run down her cheeks. Speaking is difficult. “It was perfect. My son built it for us. He’s an architect. He built it exactly as we wanted: wood floors, cathedral ceilings, glass everywhere. There were woods all around us. It was like living in the trees, like a tree house.”
I am back in my own pain, thinking about the house that my husband built for us, visualizing sitting at the breakfast table looking through the leaves of the graceful elm tree to the lake beyond.
With more empathy than Susan can ever know, I say, “You’re talking about giving up ‘home,’ Susan, giving up a place of peace and safety. That’s a tremendous loss. It’s not something that can easily be forgotten. Or replaced.”
“Oh!” she exclaims. “You understand! And you don’t think I’m being foolish. That’s such a relief. Now I can cry. I can cry without feeling silly.”
I sit with Susan as she cries, fighting back my own tears.
“I can’t understand,” says Jackie, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I thought it would be so wonderful to return home, to drive through Iowa on our way out west, to look at the old farmhouse, to show my kids where Mom used to live. But it was awful. It was all broken down, dilapidated. Nothing’s the same. I remember the huge trees we used to climb when we were young. They’ve all been cut down.” 
