Power and happiness

I miss Sandy. Every day, every hour, nearly every minute, except when I feel her presence strongly. But I expected to miss her. The physical pain of grief surprised me, but it's well-documented, so I came to understand it. Loss of hope: that made sense, too, and again, it's openly talked about. What I struggled to articulate was the complete and utter feeling of powerlessness that possessed me as Sandy lay dying and in the weeks that followed her death.

I felt incompetent, unreliable, unworthy. For fourteen months — from the moment we received the message that suspicious areas showed up in Sandy's chest X-ray — I had one mission: to help Sandy heal. If it was tuberculosis, as we hoped against the odds, we'd get the best possible care and she'd recover. If it was cancer, as we feared, we'd get the best treatment, alleviate cancer symptoms, and mitigate the issues that treatment itself caused — and we'd find a cure. We'd beat it. I shelved everything else except a small workload. Sandy's wellbeing was my focus, both her daily wellbeing and her longterm health.

Much of Sandy's depression was tied to her fear that she was
incompetent. She was often happiest when she had achieved
something, particularly if she'd worked with one or more other
people. The moment of celebration in this picture came when
we'd just painted Sandy's mother's kitchen for her.

There was one thing that mattered, one effort I prioritized, and I failed. Not only did I not save her, but I couldn't protect her from the pain or nausea, the confusion and frustration. I did everything I knew to do, and it wasn't good enough.

Over the past eight months, the moments that I've felt okay, the times that I've been willing to go on, have been when I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment, when I've felt competent, when I'm making a difference in some way. I don't think that's coincidental, and I don't think it's unique to my personality.

I recognized my experience in an essay by Frances Moore Lappé in the Winter 2009 issue of Yes! Magazine. Lappé looks to the Latin meaning of the word power: "to be able." She discusses the importance of community involvement, democracy as a living practice, in fostering happiness. And I think that's true; I believe that people who are empowered to shape their own lives and communities are happier. But I also think the relationship between power and happiness takes place on a micro-level. Feeling capable and competent, able to accomplish personal goals, able to form meaningful relationships — those are all about feeling powerful and they are important components of happiness, too.

I lost so much of that when Sandy died — the relationship I valued most, the person who most believed in me, the goals we shared and accomplished together, and the effort to save her — all of this was lost. I remember telling people, "If I couldn't even save Sandy, how can I expect to accomplish anything else?" And I meant it. The fact that cancer was no match for me, no match for us, didn't matter. The fact that no one has cured cancer, that breast cancer in particular is currently a luck-of-the-draw process, didn't matter.

At the time, I couldn't see that we had achieved a higher quality of life for Sandy than she might have had. That while I didn't achieve my primary goal — keeping her with me — working together, we had lengthened the time she had a high quality of life. When I checked Sandy in to the hospital on June 17, the doctor used an acronynm I didn't know, assuming I was used to the hospital routine. She thought my not knowing the acronym was due to fatigue, and then she looked over Sandy's record and, looking puzzled, said, "She hasn't been hospitalized recently?" I looked at her, confused, and said, "No. Not since 2004." It was only later that I understood the significance of the exchange: most breast cancer patients get to know hospitals far too well; most of their partners understand that DPOA means "durable power of attorney" because they get used to the routine of admittance. We'd stayed clear of all that. Sandy didn't spend time in the hospital until 32 days before her death. She had an active, engaged life, even as the fatigue grew stronger and even after the nerve pain began. We didn't fail at everything just because I wasn't able to achieve the impossible.

It's taken me months to understand that, while I was powerless against cancer, I am not powerless in the world. It's such a simple statement, but through the pain of grief, it's not an easy one to get to. And now, knowing what I've learned, it's one of the things that I would say to anyone who's agonizing over a loss. Knowing you're not powerless in the world doesn't bring back someone who's died, but it does help you find a way back to purpose and happiness.