Julian S. Schlusberg - Uncommon Grace: Revelations in the Place Called Mourning

We found this beautiful and moving book to be a source of inspiration. Julian Schlusbergs insightful work can help guide us all through the journey of grief to a place of greater awareness and self-understanding.

Katherine and Edward (Ted) Kennedy, Jr.

Doctors and nurses who treat cancer patients can learn much from Julian Schlusbergs work. Grief is the unspoken presence for our families and patients with advanced cancer, but doctors and nurses dont often talk to families and patients about it. Drawing upon his experience, Schlusberg offers hope to families facing similar loss. He provides a roadmap for bearing the unbearable and getting on without forgetting.

Thomas J. Lynch, Jr., M.D.

Jonathan and Richard Sackler Professor of Medicine

Director, Yale Cancer Center

Physician-in-Chief, Smilow Cancer Hospital

New Haven, CT.

In Uncommon Grace, Julian Schlusberg generously shares his heartfelt observation and poignant remembrances to tell of living with his beloved Ort during his last months. His intimate reflections on grieving continue into the five years after Orts death, as a progressive shift in his consciousness unfolds. In this transformative journey, Julian points to a core valuethe importance of paying attention, of truly listening to someone else. With this willingness to embrace anothers story, to be graced by the persons presence, you can expand your capacity to love and be loved and be inspired to realize the richness of living. Listen to Julians storyallow yourself to be moved.

David J. DePalma, Phd,

Director of HeartVoice

Author of Remembering Your HeartVoice: The Guidebook

UNCOMMON GRACE

REVELATIONS IN THE PLACE
CALLED MOURNING

JULIAN S. SCHLUSBERG

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

UNCOMMON GRACE

REVELATIONS IN THE PLACE CALLED MOURNING

Copyright 2013 Julian S. Schlusberg.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0484-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0486-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0485-1 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013915172

iUniverse rev. date: 09/04/2013

CONTENTS

Mr. Schlusberg gratefully acknowledges the following for granting permission to reprint previously published material:

John ODonohue, Blessing: On the Death of the Beloved, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings . Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

C. P. Cavafy, Ithaka, found in Cavafy , Collected Poems Revised Edition , 1975 Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart, The Colors of My Life, from Barnum . Copyright 1980, published by Notable Music Co., Inc. Used with permission.

Emily Dickinson, Will There Really Be a Morning? and I Reason, Earth Is Short, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Reading Edition , edited by R.W. Franklin, Harvard University Press, 1997, Public Domain.

Danna Faulds, Sangha, Go in and In (Peaceable Kingdom Books, 2002), reprinted with permission from Ms. Faulds.

Sherwin B. Nuland, an excerpt from How We Die: Reflections of Lifes Final Chapter , copyright 1993 by Sherwin B. Nuland, published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., N.Y. 1994; reprinted with permission from Mr. Nuland.

Mark Rickerby, How We Survive, reprinted with permission from Mr. Rickerby, markrickerby.com.

Pete Seeger, To My Old Brown Earth, 1958, reprinted with permission from Mr. Seeger.

Henry Van Dyke, I am Standing upon the Seashore, found in Gone from My Sight, The Dying Experience, by Barbara Karnes, 1986 by Barbara Karnes, Public Domain.

David Whyte, What I Must Tell Myself, printed with permission from Many Rivers Press, Langley, Washington, www.davidwhyte.com.

William Carlos Williams, The Widows Lament in Springtime from The Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909-39 , copyright 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Cover graphics designed by Angie Hurlbut of in New Haven, CT.

Photo credit: Lauren Loro

Orten Louis Pengue Jr.

1948-2008

Surely there is a window from heart to heart.
Jall ad-Dn Muhammad Rm, Poet, Jurist, Theologian,
and Sufi Mystic

For Jennifer, Kyle, Brian, Frank, MaryAnn, Judy,
Ann, Marie, and Pam.

And for all the caregivers everywhere,

and for all the grievers.

To take one step is courageous;

To stay on the path day after day,

Choosing the unknown,

And facing yet another fear,

That is nothing short of grace.

Danna Faulds, from her poem Sangha.

Where do I begin? I suppose it would have to be when I first learned that Ort had a large, aggressive brain tumor, a glioblastoma multiforme grade IV, which would cause his death within a year. I remember the doctor giving me the news. Actually, I can pinpoint that very moment, and from then until now, everything about my life has changed. Ort and I had been together for nearly thirty years and had planned on at least another thirty. Doesnt everyone?

This book starts with that news of the tumor and with those enormous days following, days that defied their twenty-four-hour architecture. Instead, days and nights had neither start nor finish but blended seamlessly, and everything that I had come to think of as normal until now wasnt to exist anymore. Those first days put me somewhere between intellectually knowing that I was alive and emotionally trapping me in a place somewhere less than that. I recall things swirling around me, a dizzying collection of disconnected memoriesvoices without faces, cautious glances, whispering, things-to-do lists, name tags pinned to white lab coats, rain beating on the car windows in the middle of the night, doctors appointmentsso many of themmy friend, Ann, touching my arm and offering me something from her pocketbook but I dont remember what it was. So often I felt paralyzed, unable to move, to act, that another friend, Brian, had to constantly remind me to breathe.

Out of nowhere, on a pleasant fall evening, we were sitting on the couch reading, and thenblindsided. Ort had gone to the doctor for a flu shot but also mentioned that he had been having dizzy spells, which led to a brief exam, during which his inability to touch his nose with his eyes closed alarmed our ordinarily staid, objective doctor. Which led to an MRIor was it a CT scan?which led to the unforgettable look on the surgeons facethe very serious look with the unblinking eyes and the hard-set jaw, accompanied by the direct yet soft, deep-pitched voice delivering the news. And suddenly the world was rushing lopsided through space. History took a sharp turn with no transition, and out of nowhere, a future that was ominous and dark loomed overhead. I recall making a phone call to my sister and not being able to speak. The sun shined so brightly through the large hospital windows that it made me dizzy, and I resented every inanimate object around metables, bookcases, the wooden armchairs with burgundy cloth-covered cushioned seatsbecause they would be on this earth for years and years and Ort wouldnt see next Christmas.