Debi passed away in August 2016. Before that day, we went through so much….financial struggles, job insecurities, medical problems, business growth and failure, numerous changes to cope with the expected unexpected of 20+ years of chronic illness.
Before she had passed away, I had researched grief recovery and started to create plans for what to do after she was gone. She also encouraged me that she wanted me to live my life. We had a friend that had said “I don’t want my husband going on without me. I want him to miss me!” Debi said, absolutely NOT! NO WAY! She said that she knew I had given up so much to care for her. She did not want me wasting time after she passed mourning or missing her. Her motto was “Always hope. Never give up. Live life!” I knew that I could best honor her life, by moving forward with my own life after she died.
Sabbath year and Self-care
Like most caregivers I had neglected my own care because we just didn’t have the resources. So when God told me to take a Sabbath year, I knew that would be important. I needed to take some time to recover, plus I needed to start catching up on my own medical checkups.
In case you don’t know, a Sabbath year means no work. We had run through our savings many years prior. We were in bankruptcy working with the bank to save our home. Our business had failed several years prior and I wasn’t able to do consulting while I was caring for her those last few years. I was lucky that our state had a program that allowed me to be paid as her caregiver. However, that income obviously ended when she died. So here I was no savings and no income with God telling me to not work for an entire year.
One month prior to her death, Colorado Springs was hit by a major hailstorm. Our home and car had sustained damage. The damage to the car was only cosmetic. I didn’t mind driving around in a “golf ball”, so I was able to live for several months on the insurance money from the car. The car was a wheelchair van, so after that money ran out, I was still able to sell it to get enough money for several more months.
As the end of that first year approached, in July 2017, my doctor came back with the news that I would have to have quadruple bypass surgery. “You cannot leaving the hospital until you have surgery” was his exact words. This resulted in another 6 months of recovery before I could even start to consider going back to work.
Building a Social Life
After she died, I had spent a few weeks with family, and returned home just a few days before her birthday which fell on a Saturday. When we had started dating, I had promised to set aside Friday night for our date night. We continued that all the way up until the end. I did not work on Friday evenings. Even if we could do nothing other than watch TV together, Friday night was our time together.
This Friday night was going to be my first Friday night alone, and on top of that the following day would have been her birthday. I knew I couldn’t sit home alone, so I turned to Google and found a Christian singles group having a game night that night. Through that group I met a few other people who had lost their spouses. I got involved in that group and they walked alongside me through my grief.
Learning new things
From my research in to stress and grief recovery, I learned that one of the best things I could do is get out and try new things. During that first Christmas season, I told my new friends in the singles group that I just needed to keep busy during that season. They offered to do something every night if I needed to. Which, we pretty well did. On Wednesday nights we did karaoke. I had always been afraid to get out in front of the crowd. I thought I would eventually do some public speaking about my experience as a caregiver, so I decided to go ahead and give the karaoke a try. Karaoke is a good way to get past the fear of making a foul of yourself in front of a crowd. Singing also helped my speaking voice.
I also took up line dancing. A nightclub downtown offered line dancing lessons on Sunday evenings. Tuesdays, we started going to the dollar theater, Fridays a friend and I would go try different ethnic restaurants around town. Saturdays, the singles group usually had activities. So most of my weeknights that first Christmas season was filled with getting out with friends and doing new things.
Easing back into work
I must confess, I tried to start doing some consulting before my sabbath year was over. As soon as I started to talk to people about some projects, I had some strange forms of panic attack. I decided I wasn’t ready to start work yet, but this was also before the heart surgery. I later found out that unspecified anxiety, a general sense of doom, is actually a symptom of heart disease. So it may have been God saying “your year isn’t up yet”, or it could have been that I still needed more time to recover.
I decided I had better go see a counselor, before starting back to work. I also went in for vocational rehab. Vocational rehab’s psychiatrist diagnosed me on the Autism spectrum, and he also said that I had already had my allotment of stress for a lifetime. So he recommended only part time work initially. Unfortunately, without a savings, parttime work would not give me enough income plus part of the time also needed to be rebuilding skills return to fulltime work. The vocational rehab specialists couldn’t find a good way for me to make it through their program. So I wasn’t excepted into their program.
After I had recovered from the heart surgery, a friend from my bible study offered to give me a job helping in his business. He couldn’t pay much, but it was low-stress, and gave me a chance to make some money. He had an online store and needed help shipping. I quickly found a couple of processes I could automate for him. Little did we know that the automation was going to prove to be necessary. During the cyber week, he received 4 times more orders than he had the previous year. Without the automation, we would have never been able to keep up with the orders. Having run an online business myself, I was able to take on any job he needed. Since I could run his business, this gave him a chance to go take a vacation without having to put the business on pause. I was able to work part time with him much of that following year.
Missions and Volunteer Work
That summer I decided that while I wasn’t working fulltime I would go on a mission trip with my church. That is the trip that started my mission work in Brazil. I considered trying to become a full-time missionary, but I still have many technical skills that I wanted to put to use. I was struck by the economic need and my technical, business and remote work skills could be used to help address that economic need. After the mission trip, I started looking more into the economic development possibilities. I also started planning the computer project for Autazes.
I became part of the leadership in the singles ministry. One of the people in the singles group had some major mental health problems. Walking her through the process of getting the professional support she needed, led me into another volunteer project with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I helped plan some educational programs to help churches and other faith communities understand mental illness better.
I took up a couple of volunteer leadership rolls in my church. We had a greenhouse to grow food for some food pantries. I lead one of the teams that worked in the greenhouse. I also took on a leadership roll on the hospitality team in our weekend church services coordinating the weekend services once a month. All of this volunteer work helped refresh my “soft” job skills, and this gave me the confidence to keep pressing forward.
Grief, Trauma, and Mental Health
By the time my wife passed away, I felt like I had already earned a PhD in grief recovery. We had grieved so many losses over the years, I knew exactly what I needed to do for the grief. Both, the grief counselor and the psychiatrist told me that I knew what I needed to do. They assured me in am working through as best I can, but it will take time. I had also helped my wife through some PTSD recovery from the things she went through as a childhood cancer survivor, so I had some understanding of trauma. My research into stress recovery told me that I also had much long-term trauma. The psychiatrist confirmed that indeed I have some complex PTSD symptoms, which was why he recommended taking work slowly.
All that knowledge still did not prepare me for all of the strange things my mind does from time to time, which I will detail in another post. What I want to explain here, is that grief and trauma recovery is a long process. You will be triggered with absolutely no warning. Get professional help, be aware of how you respond when you are triggered, and be honest with those closest to you about what you are feeling.
Working for a start-up
In fall of 2019, I joined RootLo as Chief Technology Officer. They needed someone who could design and develop a global system. The team at RootLo was great to work with, and the job didn’t require me to work full-time. They fully supported my volunteer and mission work. It was a low-pressure environment that enabled me to reconnect with some of my more technical skills. During this time I also worked through much trauma from all that I went through trying to balance work and caregiving.
I already had much technical and business experience from before I had to leave my career and close my business. The things I went through as a caregiver, the medical research and care team coordination are important parts of my skillset now. When faced with the challenge of moving forward even when I couldn’t work, I found ways to volunteer. Caregiving takes its toll on a person’s career, but it doesn’t have to keep you from building skills for employment after the caregiving ends.
Where is God in all of this?
When my wife died, I was left in bankruptcy with no job, no savings, no income, and heart disease. My home was foreclosed shortly after I recovered from the heart surgery leaving me homeless. I was over 45, which is a dinosaur in my chosen field, the tech industry. If it sounds pretty hopeless, well honestly, it was. Experts couldn’t give me any hope to recover.
I wasn’t without hope. I am just explaining from a human perspective the situation I was in. As I had done so many time to find the strength to care for my wife, I turned to God for guidance. I asked God to direct my steps. He showed me, it isn’t a matter of recovering. Recovery means returning to where you were before. Instead, I had to rebuild from where I was. All that we went through is a part of who I am today. The trauma, the experiences, the good and the bad make me who I am. I do not regret my life as a caregiver. God has been directing my steps in amazing ways. I am homeless with no steady income, yet I travel the world and touch lives. I have met some pretty amazing people along the way too. I am continuing to rebuild as my wife’s motto says:
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