Conversations on Loss: Jimmy
Jimmy met Melissa when they both were just 21. A hookup led to a relationship, which led to an engagement, and then a wedding. Melissa was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer when she was 23. She noticed a small lump in her breast that her doctor assumed was just a cyst. Her life was turned upside down when she discovered she actually had an aggressive form of breast cancer. One year later, she had undergone radiation and chemotherapy, and bravely shaved off her trademark red hair. It was all worth it as she was finally deemed cancer free.
When Melissa was 25, the cancer returned. Melissa made the decision to remove both of her breasts. Despite taking every recommend step and precaution to battle cancer, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at the age of 28.
In June of 2020, Melissa died at the age of 32-years old.
After loss, you have no choice but to keep moving. To wake up and face each new day is to hold hope in the future, whether you feel it or not. I recently spoke with Jimmy about his grief, as he’s just eight-weeks out of losing his partner. I wanted to understand what grief looks like at this point in the process, continuing to question - will grief get easier with time?
What was Melissa she like? What did she love to do?
Melissa was a woman with an infectious personality. She made friends fast, and she considered her closest friends to be family. She was diagnosed with cancer when she was only 23 which led to many feeling that she was "wise beyond her years". Sadly, this wisdom came at the cost of a terminal illness. Because her smile could light up a room she often was described as "graceful" in the face of her illness -- she would have called it makeup and wigs hiding her fear and chemo hair -- I would call it bravery in the face of death. Whatever one would call it we spent over 10 years of her short life together saying fuck cancer, and I can say without hesitation that she is the single bravest person I have ever known.
She had many passions in life. None greater than the arts. Melissa always believed in the arts as a way to "make cancer suck a little less". For many this would also mean the development of the community that her artistic ventures would create. Melissa strived to use art to connect people, to allow people to feel, fight, and grieve as a community connected by love and art. Her main artistic focus was filmmaking and photography. She loved walking through town with her old 35mm camera photographing the beauty she would see in the smallest things. There were times when we'd simply be on a walk, and she'd stop to take a picture of the way light fell through the trees leaving a pattern on a wall that caught her eye. It was as if she saw a fleeting work of art in these moments that needed to be captured by her camera before they were lost forever. It was this love and appreciation for life's beauties that was what made Melissa such an infectious person, but it was her eagerness to explore and share her view of the world that made her special to me.
What's a good memory you have of Melissa?
I think there have been many good memories over the years, and so many great adventures. Our career has afforded us a lot of travel opportunities, but at the end of the day that good memories that I think about most are simple walks through our street where she might see a cat and ask it if it needed a home while looking back at me to assure me she is only half joking.
What did grief feel like right after your loss?
It was an overwhelming rush of emotions. The kind of feeling where you stop seeing what is right in front of you and your voice chokes from your lips but you hardly know what you're saying. I think the idea of the stages of grief are fairly accurate, but they don't always happen one at a time. I am fortunate to have some very close friends and family in my life to share it with, but I felt immediately overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, in particularly, by the deafening silence that accompanied her absence. All the family and friends in the world would not be able to replace her voice, her laugh, her simple presence in a room. The further I got from her death the worse the silence got. It slowly became replaced with well wishes, familiar voices, and the occasional "time heals all wounds", but I can't stress enough that time makes it much worse before it gets better.
What have people done that was supportive or made you feel loved after Melissa died?
My closest friends spent a lot of time talking, or really just listening to me talk. Not always about Melissa. They were not always capable of giving a good reply, but they would listen regardless. They would also talk to me about pointless stuff, but even then I would often mention how Melissa would love or hate something and having a person in my life to acknowledge and laugh about Melissa idiosyncrasies helped.
Likewise, my friends didn't let me feel different after Melissa died. I lost Melissa, but my friends made sure I knew they were still there for me, and that they love me as much as they loved Melissa. That normalcy and support meant the world when everything else was turned upside down. I mentioned the deafening silence that the loss brought and having people who I could simply send a meme to that I would normally have shared with Melissa helped.
As Melissa husband, my experience has been unique, and for a while I was angry -- angry in a way that deep down I refused to believe anyone could possibly understand what I'm going through. Bitterness at those around me who are in happy relationships. It's a reminder of what I lost, but it was better than lonely isolation. I'm glad those friends continually asked, like a lot, because I said no many times until one day I didn't. That patience and support was what helped me.
Do you have any advice or wisdom to share with someone who has recently lost a partner?
There is no preparation for this. It's unlike anything you'll ever experience. I still haven't fully figured out how to cope, but give it time. Not because time heals anything but because you will have days, maybe even weeks where you feel good and think you've moved on before one sound, one smell, one memory pops up and overwhelms you with a painful feeling of loneliness and grief over what you had and all the moments that never will be.
I also found that finding an outlet helped me. As a filmmaker, I wrote a script about my experience. This let me put some of my feelings into words, which was very cathartic while taking some artistic liberties to make it a little less real. It spawned long bouts of crying because I could really reflect on what I was going through. It also spurred one way conversations with my late wife about how she was the better writer, and I hear her voice say that lovingly every time I hit some writer's block. It connected me back with what I lost. Melissa and I wrote and created art together, and this allowed me to stay close to that element of her.
What was anticipatory grief like?
For me, anticipatory grief really hit me in the form of anxiety. I was constantly anxious about how I would pay for a treatment that may be available, but for whatever reason wasn't covered by insurance. I was anxious at the thought of losing my insurance (I'm self-employed) and not being able to keep my wife's oncologist. I was anxious that if she died because I couldn't provide her with whatever she needed I would be haunted by that fact for the rest of my life.
So, I was anxious a lot, and I was also anxious that one day I would lose her. When that day came, I for one felt that anxiety turn straight to sadness and despair when Melissa finally did pass. I no longer felt that anxiety. It's like the weight of anxiety lifted and without even a moment to take a breath it was replaced by a curtain grief. A billowy fucking curtain that changes every few minutes from sorrow, to anger -- from pain, to loneliness, but a curtain of grief nonetheless.
As much as you can tell, How has losing your partner changed you?
During my script writing I had this question: What is it like to live when you have no fear of dying? I don't mean that in a suicidal or immortal way, but rather, when you've lost the most important thing in your life, the thing that you devoted everything to, the thing that kept you going, where do you go next? Does it matter? Does our focus change?
I can't say I have answers to this, but it's something I ponder. My belief is that as I lost the most important thing in my life I have gained a little bit of a chilled out, who gives a fuck trait to my personality - but then again the journey has just begun for me. I personally needed to take time to process before making any big life moves so here I sit, processing, and hoping that my fire and passion for various things life has to offer returns.
I think the word "hope" is key here. I didn't lose hope because Melissa wouldn't let me. She was so hopeful at what the world had to offer that I feel this pull to follow in her footsteps, to learn how to be a little more like her everyday while pacing myself.
Do you think it will get easier? When people say "time heals all wounds" - is there truth in this?
No, to me that feels like, "god has a plan", or "she's in a better place", or my least favorite "at least she's no longer in pain". They are nice words to hear I suppose and maybe they can help someone, but for me, I don't believe that I am healing thanks to time. I think I'm learning to cope, but the idea of simplifying this experience down to a wound that will just heal over time is too simplistic. You can't bandage up this wound and heal it in a few weeks and be done with it. It's more like cancer. A cancer that can be treated but will never go away. A chronic cancer that even if you're given a clean bill of health will linger over you at times like a storm cloud waiting to rain on your fucking parade. Cancer does not always heal with time, it grows worse or is held stable, and I believe grief is similar. Time allows me to work with my therapist, talk to friends, relearn how to live alone, etc. The point I hope I'm making is that the pain of the loss will never ever go away. For me, I needed to come to terms with that quickly because there is no rip off the bandaid scenario here. I needed to accept that I'll grieve Melissa forever to keep my personal sanity in check and accept what I've lost.
You can learn more about Melissa and Jimmy’s story by checking out their film, Ginger.
You can watch the film here.