Holidays and Coping With a Beloved's Recent Death

I have been living with the death of my mid-life-love-story husband for six months. A holiday with a “missing chair at the table” was a catalyst for writing. The road out of the acute pain I feel when I imagine the holidays without David requires me to “find the words.” Getting feelings and experiences into language has always been helpful.

Each loss is unique. Each relationship requires its own resolutions, each person deserves to be honored for their lifetime on this Earth. When David died, I relied on certain skills and beliefs.

But I also remembered the question my husband asked me and his palliative care nurse when he was midway through his 22-night process of dying. His distress and agitation had suddenly ceased and his ability to articulate returned. He asked, “What happens next?”

I want to address perspectives on consciousness following death and the potential expansion of tools for those who prefer to maintain a connection rather than release it.

Synchronicity. A conversation with a friend on a different topic reminded me of Imants Baruss’s early work. I first met Baruss in 1988 when I was the incoming president of the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery while I was organizing its annual conference. The young Canadian psychologist brought his dissertation research to New Haven and presented compelling data on the existence of three worldviews concerning the nature of reality: materialism, partial transcendence, and radical transcendence. I found his data and arguments consistent with perspectives I had encountered as an undergraduate majoring in religion decades earlier.

While tracking his early work down to share a reference with my friend, I learned that Baruss had recently been studying the survival of consciousness, an argument that the soul is eternal, the physicality of matter returning to a state of pure energy.

The American Psychological Association published three of Baruss’s recent books. I bought Death as An Altered State of Consciousness: A Scientific Approach, a perfect accompaniment to books and films of case studies — anomalous experiences relating to a person who had died, stories told by patients who had been pronounced dead but later revived, and reports of communications with the deceased — that I had been discovering.

More synchronicity. An interview on a podcast series titled “Trauma and Grief” featured my teacher, friend, and dissertation committee member, Gary E. Schwartz, who had fathered the fields of biofeedback and psychophysiology and been one of the founding members of health psychology. He later left Yale to expand his research lab, tackling consciousness and remote communication at the University of Arizona. He published The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death. Schwartz was an impeccable scientist; I ordered his book.

Source: Bianca van Dijk/Pixabay

I sensed that David’s spirit remained among us, delighted when he saw us exploring, learning, loving, enjoying ourselves, and silently sending support when we were sad, troubled, or angry. I began sharing with him more directly, hoping that he too enjoyed the drives with his favorite vocalist on the car sound system or pondering possible solutions to a problem that plagued me. I appreciated feeling that my insights and evolving worldview were validated by rigorous scientific methods and careful reasoning, through Baruss's and Schwartz’s work.

I began creating a new relationship with my deceased lover. We now communicate quite differently. I am learning to pay attention to a broader collection of details and associations signaling that his spirit is around. We had been extraordinarily close, our connection continually deepening from its transatlantic courtship into the decades we were together. We never stopped learning from each other. The burial of his body may be just a detail.

At this time, the three main ways that David and I communicate are:

1. Writing. I write in my daily journal (three pages longhand each day as recommended by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way). I also ask him questions, writing with my right hand, and David answers them, by writing with my left hand. The key here is to be open to whatever words appear on the page, allowing them to beg interpretation, much like dreamwork.
2. Music. David and I had always communicated through sharing songs and I began noticing those that addressed an immediate situation I was facing. His favorite lyrics or artists would pop into my environment. I grinned when Frank Sinatra's "My Way" mysteriously accompanied me through dental implant surgery.
3. Light reflections. From the evening we met, David knew that I loved “sparklies” regardless of the form in which they appeared. I learned to spot them and feel him being with me, sharing an experience. I especially appreciate the candle flames lit each Friday night, initiating Sabbath services in my congregation.

A chair will be missing from the holiday table. My son will carve the turkey, and my son-in-law will take charge of clean-up, covering David’s historically major jobs. And David will be present among us, twinkling in the background, sending his love that never dies along, and urging us to move on, to celebrate the lives we are lucky enough to be living, the lessons we are lucky to learn. Perhaps one day I will choose to let him go. But not now.

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Copyright 2024 Roni Beth Tower