By Ron Stempkowski
When my husband Ken was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I began a journey that felt like climbing a mountain I didn’t know existed—and there was no way around it. Certainly unexpected. Incredibly challenging. At times, it just felt wholly impossible. But I did it. Because I had no choice. With no time to plan, I grabbed on where I could—even if it was just a pinprick of an outcropping—enduring the emotional cuts, bruises, and hopelessness I sometimes felt along the way because I had to be with him. I had to support and love him. Until he no longer needed me. Until he was no longer suffering. I would be his escort, guardian, and protector—no one else. Though I sometimes accepted the hands of those who offered them on the climb, I usually swatted them away, determined to escort him on my own.
It was only a couple of days before Thanksgiving that year when Ken’s doctor gave us the news: his cancer had returned. And it wouldn’t be the last time in the next year and a half. The ground rumbled below, and a swell of earthen angst rose before me, though it didn’t seem that big. And it wasn’t—at first. But as remedies failed to stop cancer’s onslaught, the mountain’s peak shot into the clouds. I couldn’t see it anymore. I just saw a long journey into darkness with no hope of light to guide me.
I wasn’t equipped for this journey, but there was no turning back. Ken’s and my relationship embodied what I’d always dreamed of—a partnership in love, life, family, and creativity. In the ten years we spent together, he was my rock, cheerleader, and best friend. So, when the person I loved and relied on the most was slowly being stolen from me, I had to steel myself. And I had to learn to climb by climbing.
We’d made other climbs together before. Smaller ones: he’d had some minor injuries and surgeries before, and we’d climbed together in perfect sync. This time would be no different, I hoped. We’d begin this climb together—hand in hand—but only I would be returning home. Alone, broken, and defeated. Though I couldn’t change the outcome, there were things I could do to make the climb meaningful—to make my choices meaningful: by remaining present, acknowledging my feelings, and resolving to take time on this journey in seconds and minutes. Not months or years. Or lifetimes. It was during this early part of the climb when I began to find joy in tiny moments; those infinitesimal nothings that pass by quickly, but with experience in loss, can fill up your reserves in an instant with gratitude you don’t have to look hard to find. A smile. Laughter. A perfect, beautiful flower. Solace in things I used to have the luxury of taking for granted.
No one welcomes grief’s climb. He’s an intruder. An interloper who arrives at the scene of chaos to both gloat and foreshadow—a confusing combination. I’d caught a glimpse of grief from time to time as I pulled myself up the mountain. He was always there in the corner of my eye, but I never acknowledged him. In fact, I reviled him. And I raged against him—in my thoughts and words of anger that scorched the pages of my sacred journals. I hated him. And I would never let him defeat me. Grief was my enemy. He had declared war on Ken and me, and I was prepared to do whatever I could to fight it. I’d find a way to defeat it. I’d be the first.
Deep inside, a part of me was more prepared for this journey than I could have ever thought. As a child of the 70s, I learned a lot about quicksand from television. The murky mud-water was so prevalent on my weeknight lineup I assumed my adult life would be fraught with quicksand confrontations. But, also thanks to TV, I learned how to get out of quicksand: by not fighting it—that only made you sink faster. It was by relaxing and eventually getting thrown a vine to pull yourself out that you could escape its gluey grasp.
Turns out, dealing with the climb of grief has a lot in common with dealing with sinking in quicksand. At some point in my journey, I stopped struggling against grief. For me, a big part of that meant becoming transparent in my feelings about Ken’s illness and impending death. I figured that grief could pass right through me if it couldn’t see me. It would have nothing to impact or ricochet off to gain momentum. I understood that acceptance was my invisibility cloak, of sorts. Ken was my only focus. I didn’t want to waste time dreading a future without him. I had the rest of my life to deal with that, and I wouldn’t waste what was left of Ken’s on it.
As soon as we embarked on this climb, I understood my role clearly without anyone telling me. My sole responsibility was to climb with Ken, knowing when to help him and—more importantly—knowing when not to. When I think of those final nine weeks of our climb during hospice care in our home, I smile. Despite the obstacles we encountered, our journey was filled with incredible joy. And laughter. And peace—because of Ken’s resoluteness and grace. There is absolutely no doubt that he led us on the climb all the way to the summit—as if he knew the way. It was so easy to follow him. Ken left a wake of hope, possibility, and humor wherever he went—even on this—his last journey.
On a climb as grueling as this one, resting was an essential part of the journey. For both of us. I stayed up until Ken was asleep, grateful he could rest up for the next day’s climb. While he slept, I wrote, documenting our journey and my feelings before I closed my eyes for the night—an essential part of my self-care and sanity. Sleep had been no friend to me during those weeks and months. With nothing to focus on but my thoughts, rest slipped further and further away. How was I going to live my life without him? I had no idea.
I wrote non-stop during those late-night hours. Prolifically. In these sessions, as I clicked on the keyboard in my journal or blog, I found incredible comfort. It’s when I first began to get a true understanding of the thoughts and feelings that were swirling around me, and how I could interpret or mitigate them enough in my daily life to ensure I could serve Ken and love him to my greatest capacity until he drew his last breath—a weighty proposition for anyone. I poured my heart into my blogs and took willing readers along with me on the journey I’d most unwillingly embarked upon.
It was those moments of truth and vulnerability where I cast my greatest fears and darkest thoughts into the ether of the internet that washed back on me a great calm and feeling of connection to something much bigger—much more important—than my situation. It was my reward, of sorts, for being open and telling my story. It became a habit because it felt so good.
The final days of the climb were the hardest. Ken was no longer verbal. No longer himself. As if parts of him were slowly evaporating. On the final part of the climb, I carried him to the summit. It was a part of the journey I had dreaded the most, but the part where my resolve had to be as strong as Ken’s had been to get us this far. Upon reaching the finish line I never wanted to reach, Ken was gone. He’d made a heroic climb and had been rewarded with being freed from a body I loved dearly, but that ultimately failed him.
For one single split second, the beauty of the summit was dazzling. In that brief flash of a moment, all things seemed possible somehow. Everything made sense. I had a deep understanding of life and death that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Even the memory of it faded before I could understand it.
Not only had the journey up the mountain been punishing, but I had yet another climb to make—down the other side of it. And I knew the journey wouldn’t be the same as the first part. It would be lonelier. All of us left standing on that summit without Ken for the first time had our own journeys to make. Each would be different. And each would be arduous.
As I contemplated the next part of the journey, I took comfort in the lessons I’d learned on the way up to the summit. I was better prepared for this next part than I had been for the first. And before I took my first step down, a hand was offered to me. This time, it was grief offering me his hand. Gently. Kindly. And I took it. Steadfastly.
Grief escorted me down the mountain. It protected me—sometimes by overwhelming me with my feelings so I couldn’t focus on any one of them. And sometimes, it dulled the senses that had to be razor-sharp while I was shepherding Ken up the climb. It gave me tunnel vision to focus on one simple thing at a time. Grief turned out to be something I hadn’t expected. It’s a shapeshifter. Something helpful and good.
Grief also gave me permission to express how I was feeling and provided distraction when I had nothing to say. On that journey down the mountain, I learned grief could fill an empty room, when necessary, as much as it can make a crowded one feel utterly desolate and bare. It’s powerful. And I think it was designed to help me navigate this time of great change—of great loss. It taught me to open up when I needed to listen to what it was saying—because one of the greatest lessons I learned on the climb down was that grief will not be ignored.
The landscape eventually flattened as I descended the other side of that mountain. Walking further and further from it, all I see now when I turn around is beauty, accomplishment…and reverence for every step of that grueling, heartbreaking—and rewarding—journey. I learned so much while I climbed that unforgiving mountain. I learned the truth about Ken and me: we were exactly who we thought we were to each other. Until the very end—and even now, all these years later. I showed up for Ken every day as best I could until the man I loved drew his last breath. It’s the greatest gift I could ever hope to give him. And I’ll be forever grateful for that.
I’ve climbed more mountains of grief in my life, but none as seemingly insurmountable as the one I climbed with—and for—Ken. When my father died seven years later, the mountain again rose before me. But this time, it wasn’t a craggy vertical wall I had to climb; it was a steep incline I could walk. And I could see the outline of a path that had been used in the past. Maybe by others before me. Maybe by me. And it allowed me to help steady my mother and sisters as much as I could on our journey together.
Because I’m a mountain climber.
© 2023, Ron Stempkowski. All Rights Reserved.
This essay placed in the top ten of the Writer’s Digest 92nd Annual Writing Competition, Memoir/Personal Essay. My goal as a non-fiction writer of grief and loss is to remind us all that we are far more connected, and have far more in common than we don’t.