Loss, Lament, and Legacy

Hello, friends. It has been a long time, hasn’t it?

Several months ago, I started to write a post to explain why I hadn’t written in so long. What I planned to say then is this: It’s really difficult to write about sex when you aren’t having any. Truly, it is.

And I’ll come back to that idea in a bit.

Shortly after my father-in-law died in April, my husband began to experience serious kidney problems. He had a very large kidney stone (8mm) that put him into brief septic shock and ultimately required a stent and eventually surgery. He was in pain all the time, and when we did have sex, it resulted in bleeding and more pain for him. So we waited until he was past the surgery.

However, he continued to experience pain and determined that it was from his excess weight. He was scheduled for bariatric surgery in October, so we decided to wait until he was past his early recovery. We knew we would have time later and that sex would be easier and less painful then.

After my father-in-law’s death, we finally had the house to ourselves—but we couldn’t enjoy it in the ways we had talked about.

Our sexlessness was a mutual decision based on his health and comfort. We continued to connect through nonsexual intimacy, but it wasn’t quite as good as sexual intimacy would have been. We both looked forward to life after his surgery, when we could be more active again, both sexually and otherwise.

Loss and Lament

October came and went. My husband’s surgery went well. His recovery was also good—until suddenly it wasn’t.

Big Guy became weak and could barely eat or drink; he was easily confused. We thought it was the lack of protein and hydration, so I did everything I could to get him to eat and drink.

After a concerted effort on my part and his, he tripped one night and couldn’t get up. I had to call 911 for lift assistance. Two days later, I took him to the hospital.

He never came home.

The problem was not the surgery itself. Rather, he had developed another bad urinary tract infection and his sepsis had returned. After more than a week in the hospital, his infection began to win the battle against AFib and congestive heart failure.

The next morning, Big Guy died while I was on my way to the hospital. His heart stopped multiple times and ultimately they just could not revive him.

I am at such a loss.

More than I ever thought possible, I miss my husband. If I could have just one more hour with him, I would be willing to take the worst hour of our marriage. It would still be better than every minute I now live without him. I just want to be held by him one more time and tell him how much I love him.

I didn’t realize how often I wanted to share something with him or send him a silly meme until I couldn’t do it anymore. Watching my kids grieve his death is heart-wrenching. And he barely got to be a grandpa. I was so excited to watch my husband enjoy grandchildren, but the only one he got to meet will not remember him at all.

This loss also brings on some feelings of betrayal. I know this isn’t how God works, but there’s a part of me that thinks, Whoa, I did all that work on sex only to lose him after our marriage grew? That’s so unfair! Why didn’t you protect me from this?

My heart will never be the same. I know that God will take care of me and that I will eventually be okay, but this has carved an emotional scar so deep it will always be with me.

Even More Losses

There are practical matters, too.

My father-in-law’s estate was almost settled. Because it wasn’t, my husband’s share of the estate now becomes part of his own estate and necessitates a months-long process of probate.

Big Guy’s death came as such a shock that we had no funeral preparations in place and we were unprepared for the expense.

Wonderful marriage ministry friends put together a GoFundMe to help me pay for the funeral and other upcoming expenses. If you’d like to donate, visit this page. You can also make a donation through PayPal. If you have found this marriage ministry helpful, please consider helping.

I expect to keep my websites up, at least for a while. Your donations will help accomplish that, too. The Honeycomb & Spice community will be closed. The podcasts will be up to the others to decide.

Additionally, my husband’s death also affected my potential income. That thing I mentioned about how hard it is to write about sex when you aren’t having any? I had several projects lined up that I now cannot do. I also can’t do marriage ministry or sex podcasts or most of the things on my calendar.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself yet. I know God will show me, and I believe I will come back to some kind of ministry again. But it won’t be what I had been doing. I can’t write or speak about how to conquer a struggle with sex when I won’t ever again be able to see my husband’s eyes or feel his arms around me or be told how much he loves me.

I’ll be busy trying to figure how how to navigate this grief. I’ve cried more tears than I thought I had in me.

Legacy

Big Guy’s funeral—that is, Doug’s funeral— was the most horrible and beautiful day of my life. Several marriage ministry friends came to hug me and grieve with my family. So many people sent me messages and prayed for me that day.

My husband was an Air Force veteran, so he was given military rites. I expected the 21-gun salute. I expected to be given the flag. I did NOT expect my brother-in-law—my husband’s only sibling—to be the one handing me the flag and speaking the words that begin, “On behalf of a grateful nation, . . . “ Neither one of us made it through that.

Doug would have been touched to know that people from so many times in his life came to pay their respects. Some of them I hadn’t seen in decades. My husband lives on in the memories they shared with us.

After the service, burial, and meal were over and it was just the kids and me back at the house again, I made an offhand comment about how my husband was supposed to help me measure for a new bra and now what was I going to do about it?

One of the kids commented, “Yeah, like that would have worked. You know he would’ve been distracted and you wouldn’t have gotten around to the measuring.”

Next thing I knew, my kids were having a brief conversation about my husband’s and my sex life. It was appropriate, but kids and bonus kids (their spouses) talked about sex as a positive thing and they were all encouraged that we’d had a good sex life.

Although our sex life wasn’t good for a long time, it ended up being great (until this year). And I know Big Guy would be grinning to know of the sexual legacy we passed on to our children. I can just hear him telling them, “Of course we had sex. How do you think you got here?”

So on that note, I guess my ministry here is completed.

Thank you for being with me, my friends. I have been humbled and grateful to have walked with you for a while on the journey of reclaiming and rediscovering sex in your marriage. May you continue to enjoy all that your marriage has to offer you.

If you’d like to know a little more about my husband, you can read his obituary here.