In the wake of a terminal cancer diagnosis, Barbara and her late husband, Bob, kept on living. In fact, they partied. Barbara details how she helped preserve Bob’s humanity in the face of death. Everything from the themed parties Bob hosted from his hospice bed to how she swabbed his lips with his favorite scotch at the very end. Barbara advocated for Bob, carried out his final wishes and weathered her grief from a place of deep intuition and strength that surprised even herself.
Transcript:
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Hi. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit. Every episode, we explore death, dying, and grief through stories by authors familiar with the topic. Writers are our translators. They take what is inexpressible, impossible to explain, and they translate it into words on a page.
My guest today is Barbara Lazear Ascher. She doesn't need much of an introduction. She's a lovely human being. She's written five books and numerous articles for publications like the New York Times.
Today, we're talking about her latest book Ghosting: A Widow's Voyage Out, which she wrote after the death of her husband Bob. I could say more about Barbara but you're going to get a real sense of who she is in our conversation.
I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Barbara Ascher:
Me too.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I loved your book. Love the title.
Barbara Ascher:
I love the title too. My favorite time sailing was when we were ghosting, which is when there's no apparent wind, and yet you're moving through the water. It's a phantom wind, and so much of what happened after Bob died, there was nothing left of the physical bond and yet there was this sense of being moved with grace through not the water, but it was the same experience that I had with ghosting, which it's silent. It's silent but you move and it's mysterious.
Bob had been sailing since he was eight years old, and it was the great passion of his life. He was most himself when he was on the water.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I'd love to read just this paragraph here, because you talk about the wind and I love that metaphor. "Agony was not unexpected. There were steps I could take to ease and eventually claw my way out of it. For ages, widows had been doing that. Their stories in literature, oral traditions and paintings record their pain and release from pain. My situation wasn't singular, only its expression was at times particular, as it is for everyone who has lost a beloved.
But this was nothing I'd read or heard about, this physical response to the intensity of torment, grief is experienced in hyperbole. When the wind continued for days, I began to understand why Lear went mad."
Barbara Ascher:
Yes.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Tell me about Bob. What happened when he received his cancer diagnosis?
Barbara Ascher:
It was oddly very matter of fact. He was very calm, he called me from the office, which was just around the corner from our apartment, and he said, "Looks like pancreatic cancer." With those words, we both knew that probably we had three months. I, matching his calm, said, "What do we do now?" He said, "This afternoon, we'll go and see David", his internist. I said, "Fine."
That's what we did. Went to see David, everything was calm. I stayed behind, I pretended that I hadn't gotten my flu shot yet. My first lie of this whole proceeding, because I wanted to be honest but I wanted to give David a chance to talk to me in private.
Bob went out to the waiting room and David said to me, "It couldn't be worse news." That was that. We were very calm on the way home. That night, when we sat down for dinner, I said, "This would be a really good time for us to talk about anything that has been left unsaid. Are there any grudges? Has there ever been love that hasn't been expressed? Anger? Disappointment? Any of that? Let's take this week to think about that" and then I laughed and I said, "I'll meet you on Friday at dinner, same place, same time."
We came to the table a week later and I looked at him and I said, "So?" He just shook his head and he said to me, "So?" I just shook my head. He reached out and we held hands and we knew. We knew that we had closed this circle of love, and there was such a fierce energy of love that transpired in that moment.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
So beautiful that you were able to have that closure, have that moment of recognizing there might be something left, there might be something that needed to reconcile.
Barbara Ascher:
Yes. It would have been so unnecessary and, therefore, unfair. I didn't want to be left thinking, "Ugh, I wish I had told him I was sorry about X, Y, or Z." Or have him be sorry about something and not have told me but there was nothing.
Throughout our time together, we had talked a lot. Conversation was our favorite activity, next to [inaudible 00:06:26] he would say sailing and lovemaking.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I was just going to say, there's a few other ones in the book.
Barbara Ascher:
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
There's so much wisdom in that moment when you recognize you've said all you had to say and my own mother passed away 20 years ago, and I look back and there are things I didn't say that I wish I had.
Barbara Ascher:
We do. We absolutely do. It's the nature of the beast, the person left behind, and there are always going to be regrets, always.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Yeah. What kind of conversations did you have about his care, his cancer care?
Barbara Ascher:
Well, that was a huge surprise. Huge surprise, because we went to see the oncologist, David had setup the appointment. We went to see him and Bob said, "What's the next step?" The oncologist said, "Well, such and such has worked pretty well in these cases, a form of chemo" and my daughter and I knew that he would say, "Forget it. I'm just going to go out without all of that, because we know how this is going to turn out. Spare me the chemo."
Because that had been his mantra the entire time I had been with him, and much to both of our astonishment, he said then, "Let's do it" and Rebecca and I looked at each other and thought, "Who is this man? What's come over him?"
That was a really important lesson. It was the first lesson in letting the person who is the patient guide the discourse, guide the action, just go with that, because they're losing so much, at least, they can hold on to the power of how they're going to live out the rest of their days. You have to give them that, and that follows into when they are consciously dying. The dying are in charge of their own dying.
You can't suddenly pick up a self-help book and say, "Oh, I really think we should talk about the fact that you're dying." You have to let them be where they are. If they're in denial, let them have their denial. Whatever it is, they're going through, they are leading this, they are the directors of this film.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
It sounds like a very mindful time. You were paying close attention to every moment.
Barbara Ascher:
Yes. Very mindful.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
And sacred.
Barbara Ascher:
Yes. Yes. It was. I felt always that this was sacred space. The doctor who made a house call, the last doctor to come, sat down with me after he evaluated Bob and he said, "It's not going to be long now." Then he was very quiet, and he said, "This is where modern medicine leads off and you have picked it up." He used the word sacred. He said, "This is sacred. You have created sacred space."
I promise you, that is not because that's what I set out to do. It was the feeling, that it was the energy that existed in that space, and that energy was just this powerful, powerful love, in the face of what was going to be such sorrow and it's interesting that Bob could be so happy knowing that he was saying goodbye to a world he loved.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Yeah. You took such gentle care of him. I was really struck by that and preserved his humanity. One of the questions I have for you, because in reading the book, you are such an excellent advocate for him. I had to pull a friend out of the hospital at the end of her life and the difficulty in doing that and learning, is that something you knew before, you had experience in, or through this experience, do you feel like you grew as an advocate for him?
Barbara Ascher:
This is so out of character. So out of character. I am generally rather docile I think, but I told one of the doctors, "I want you all, the entire team, to meet me here tomorrow, and we're going to discuss my taking Bob home."
We met, they all agreed impossible. I said, "Well, you're in the business of making the impossible possible and so I want you to make it possible." Again, they were so stubborn until ... This was a huge lesson. Until I said, "I am taking my husband home to die." When I said the word die, I suddenly realized doctors are terrified of death. That's why they're doctors. They did not want to talk about his dying. They couldn't get rid of me fast enough.
I said, "You teach me everything it is I have to know to do this." They taught me how to give shots of Demerol, I went to the oncologist office, as he brought out a bunch of oranges and had me injecting oranges, various other things that had to be done.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I'm very curious about how you made the decision to keep his body at home for three days?
Barbara Ascher:
When I say that I'm a practicing Buddhist, I work hard at it. I've been doing it for 25 years and I'm just a beginner but what I didn't know was that in the Buddhist tradition, the body is kept for a certain amount of time to give ... They use the word mind, you can use the word soul. To give it time to make its transformation, and to go on its travels into the next life.
Again, the wonderful doctor who had come to visit us, I told him what I wanted to do, and he said, "That's fine. Just call me when you're ready to have me sign the death certificate, because the minute you do that, strangers are going to be in your life and it becomes an all together different experience."
It was February, I kept the windows open, my daughter went downtown and got frankincense and myrrh, which we burned, and it seemed so normal. It just seemed normal. It seemed right. The response of other people varied. Somebody saw me the other night and said, "Do you remember when I came to see you and how shocked I was to see the body still there?" I said, "Yes." She said, "I thought, 'Please send an ambulance."
There was that, at one end, and on the other were people who said the experience, that visiting took away their fear of death.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Did he look quite peaceful?
Barbara Ascher:
Yes. Yes. So peaceful. So peaceful.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Is there something different that happens when you're there over time?
Barbara Ascher:
I felt very much that he was still there. I do now believe in and have asked the people who love me, "Please do this for me", because he was very present. He was still present enough that I told the funeral parlor people, I said, "I want the body picked up at three in the morning, because New York is silent then. I don't want him going out into a noisy, noisy city." I said, "No body bag."
Again, this is not me in ordinary life. This was something else, something else entirely. When they came, I put his favorite blanket around him and I put a hat on his head to keep him warm, and I put on the CD Bob Marley singing Be Happy, and then he went.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I feel like you met every moment and every wish he might have had for the end of his life.
Barbara Ascher:
Which is interesting, because we didn't talk about it really. We didn't talk about it. Part of being in this liminal state is you are almost without skin. Your empathy is such that you feel as though you are intuiting the next thing that should be done.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
You faced this, though, awake. You were conscious. There are so many people in this culture who deny death and they just march right through and he would have died in the hospital and they would have whisked him away. That's much more common that what you were describing, which is being really present and really conscious and really with him, and following your intuition, being aware of where that led you.
Barbara Ascher:
Yes.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
How did you ask the funeral home?
Barbara Ascher:
I didn't ask. I told. I just told them. I said, "No body bag, 3 A.M." and they went along with it. They didn't argue with me. I didn't have to convince them.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Well, I love the fact that someone listening to this might even be inspired to ask for what they want and they need for their loved one. It's pretty wonderful. How did you plan a memorial service?
Barbara Ascher:
That was planned not because Bob and I talked about it after he got the diagnosis but over the years, we would say, "Well, this is what I want" or, "This is what I want" and he and I both agreed that there's just too much talking at memorial services, and so much of that talk is about the person who is speaking. He said, "More music, less talking."
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Any unexpected challenges with a memorial?
Barbara Ascher:
Yes, whether to spend the amount of money I was going to spend to have the choir come, the choir that Bob and I loved and have them come and do this and I could ill afford to do it. There was so many medical bills but I just thought, "But this is what I want. This is what I want and this is right and this is what I'm going to do."
Then because he loved the music of the music director and the organist, I decorated the box of ashes and I took it up and I asked Wally, the organist, "Do you mind if I put Bob's ashes next to you on the bench?" He said, "Not at all." I thought, "This is great. This is great. Whatever remains" and who knows, who knows what remains, we don't know, but, "Whatever remains, this would give him such joy."
I think that's the point of memorial services, intuiting what would give the person who has died the greatest joy. The misery comes later but joy is what made it work.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
That's well-said. You gave him joy at the end of his life. It's beautiful. Can you share about your grief? What your days look like and what was hard.
Barbara Ascher:
Everything. Everything. It was like being burned alive. I felt as though I really had no skin. I kept thinking of a painting I had seen in Bruges of one of the saints being flayed alive, and it was so gruesome that I grew faint and had to sit down and put my head between my legs. I asked the guard, "Does this happen often?" She said to me, "Well, there was a group of Girl Scouts last year."
I kept seeing that painting, and I knew that's what was happening to me. It is an agony, and as I say in the book, that's not individual. Mine was not more agonizing than anybody else who has lost somebody they adore. Just as being with the dying, it's a different state of being.
Grief is a completely different state of being. You are not the person you were before, nor the person you would become. It is a wild madness and painful, I was always cold, always cold. The miracle among all human beings is that they survive grief. They survive it and they go on to happiness.
I bow down before human beings that we have that capacity. It may be our greatest capacity.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
I so appreciate how you represent grief, real grief in the book.
Barbara Ascher:
Yes. Yes.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
You're not sugarcoating.
Barbara Ascher:
That would have been a waste of time.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Can you say a little bit about why ... There's a sentence that stuck with me, grief abhors beauty.
Barbara Ascher:
Anything beautiful, either made me angry or sorrowful. I was so angry, I was teaching writing in Maui, and the sunsets in Maui are I guess extraordinarily beautiful, and I saw them and I just hated them. I hated them so much, because I could not imagine beauty in a world that was bereft of Bob. Beauty is an assault, because you know this is supposed to be beautiful but it's cruel. It's cruel.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
That really resonated for me, so thank you for that. That one sentence will stay with me.
Do you have any advice for people who are grieving right now?
Barbara Ascher:
Don't let anybody tell you how to grieve. For whatever reason, when you are grieving, of course, people don't like being around sad people, they want to make it better. It's coming from a generous place but they are so clueless, you cannot tell another person how to grieve. There isn't even a how to grieve and even if people are saying, "Well, he's in a much better place" or, "He's out of his pain" and all you who are grieving think is, "But I'm in so much pain, so let's not talk about pain and try to make me feel better."
What's so important is if you hear the person you love talking to you, believe it. Don't say that's not possible. Anything is possible. We know nothing about death. We know nothing about what happens after. Although, plenty of people seem to feel very strongly that they do know, we don't know. If you hear them talking, they're talking to you in whatever way that you're receiving that. Talk back to them, talk to them. Write them letters. Watch for the birds. Watch for the birds. Know that you're not going to die of it. It feels as though you're going to die of it. You're not going to die of it.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, over time, this pocket that our hands are in, this pocket of grief, slowly gets smaller and smaller and smaller until one day, you can't put your hands in it but nobody can tell you how long that's going to take. Nobody can tell you that. It's going to take however long it's going to take.
One day, you're going to think, "Oh, I've taken care of that. That's done. I'm so happy. Everything is good" and then out of nowhere, suddenly, you're slammed and there it is again. It's so unpredictable. Completely unpredictable.
There's a lot of anxiety, which is also normal. How could we not be anxious? Considering the enormity of the fact that somebody was here and now they're gone. That's about as amazing thing to wrap our minds around as has ever been, so, of course, it makes us anxious. We're anxious when we can't wrap our minds around something.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Yeah.
Barbara Ascher:
Oh my goodness. Don't let anybody talk to you about grief that has gone on too long, that it's become, in some way, a perversion. It hasn't. It's just how you are experiencing grief.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Yeah. I love what you call cosmic winks. I so appreciate this. I have to share this story really quickly, because I know we're almost out of time, but you say, "Watch for the birds." Your dear friend said, "Watch for the birds", so my mother died in 2002, and for an entire year, I found feathers. I found them in very strange places, like the bathroom at Whole Fields and places where birds don't fly.
They came to me from all different varieties of birds and not just native birds. I will now call them cosmic winks, because it was when I was deep in my grief for her that these feathers would show up. I just really loved that part of your story, watch for the birds.
Barbara Ascher:
Yeah. Once I started talking to people about this, everybody seemed to have a story.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Yeah. That's right.
Barbara Ascher:
It doesn't necessarily have to be birds but birds ... The Greeks believed that birds were messengers from the other world. I don't need an explanation.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Nor do I.
Barbara Ascher:
I don't need any scientific proof.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
What's next for you?
Barbara Ascher:
I'm writing a book now about letting go, not in connection with this, but this tidal wave of baby boomers, we're all washing up on the shore of the end, and I just feel I have to jettison things, the way I spend my time, the people I spend time with. I hate to let go. I hate to let go, but I feel that I need to make myself lighter. I need to cling as long as I can, until I let that go, to the people and things, experiences, that really matter to me, until we've narrowed it down and narrowed it down, until the final letting go, and about that, we have no choice.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Wow. Thank you so much for your time.
Barbara Ascher:
Wonderful.
Sarah Cavanaugh:
Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. You can learn more about this podcast and my online course at my website, PeacefulExit.Net. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. You can rate and review this show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
This episode was produced by Large Media. You can find them at LARJMedia.com. Special thanks to Ricardo Russell for the original music throughout this podcast. More of his music can be found on Bandcamp.
As always, thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit.
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