WEBVTT

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Norton used to leave to
work about quarter after

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six. Uhm, I used to u... I

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usually got up with him around 5:30.
But this particular morning I didn\'t

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and he came in and I said... I thought
he was going to kiss me good-bye. And I

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said, \"Oh! You\'re leaving?\" And
he said, \"I don\'t feel well.\"

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I brought him out in here and he

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was in terrible pain. I called my

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daughter and I called the man across.
And I, I

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dialed 911. Uhm,

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Norton sat on the chair of... on
the right... to my right here.

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And I ah, for some reason, I was kneeling on
the floor just right where he was sitting.

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And we were waiting, we\'re waiting
for Chris to come from across the

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street, and for the ambulance to come. And

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Norton said, \"I love you.\" And I

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said, \"I love you, too.\" And that was
the last thing he said in this room.

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But even with six, almost seven
months to say good-bye. And

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we talked. I, and I stop working. I stayed at
home for that, that entire period of time. We

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talked almost nonstop and, and forever. And
there\'s still not enough time to said good-bye

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and ah, ah, you know,

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we lived the happy times and imagined
the times that we\'re ahead. I was

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quite unprepared when my ah, wife actually
died in mid-December. I was quite

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unprepared for the incredible feeling
for the loss and loneliness and

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ah, and, and other... and a

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wide ray of other emotions. All, all quite
horrible and all for which I\'ve no previous ex...

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Previous experience or coping abilities.
My son was really a

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very healthy kid, it seemed.
But uhm, he, he came

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home and he said he had the flu... he wasn\'t feeling well.
He went out and got himself some flu medicine ah, over

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the counter, and go into bed
early taking a few medicine.

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And I didn\'t think anymore about it
naturally. He was 16 years old and

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uhm, he could take care of himself. He
was almost 17 in fact. And the next day,

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I tried to wake him up and I couldn\'t
wake him up. He was dead. And

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ah, I called the 911 immediately.
I didn\'t realize he was dead, of

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course ah, I was just in a state
of shock and panicked. And

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ah, the, the more the uhm, emergency
people worked on him, the

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more it became clear that it was...
It didn\'t look good. And ah, they

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took him to Stanford hospital and
ah, I guess my own reaction at

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that time was I was in total shock.
I was pacing the

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room in the house and I couldn\'t
face the fact that uhm,

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he could just suddenly be gone.
It was very difficult to,

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to face that.

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I never had to deal with
things like that in my life.

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You don\'t learn in school anything usual

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about cradling for these inevitable
crisis of life. Ah, you learn

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the trivial stuff at the most devastating and
important event in your life, which is the

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loss of person you most love. It\'s something
which... for which you\'re left entirely unprepared.

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One is alone in one\'s grief. It\'s
amazing how one can be alone in one\'s

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grief. And that goes on for many years I think.
It certainly hasn\'t stop being that way for me,

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even though I\'ve made many attempts and I\'d

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really worked on trying
to communicate that ah,

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loneliness. It\'s hard. The
most painful thing, I think,

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of all was not when I took
the children in to see him

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before we left the hospital, but walking

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into my kitchen with my five children
who hadn\'t been together for 10 years

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and... but I was alone.

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I was

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the... that, that moment, as I walked into
the kitchen and sat down, a light went out,

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which I don\'t think will ever go back on.

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You know what? One thing that
I found very hard, I had no

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experience of this kind. I had no idea
what a normal process of grief was.

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Nothing in what I read, and I read very
wide, they prepared me for what I,

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what I would feel. There were days when I was just immobilized
by depression, when I could barely get out of bed.

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There were days when I just get out
of bed, turn on some music, sit

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back down on my bed to listen to a piece of
music. And then wake up six or seven hours

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later. And that I was sleeping incredible spells
in 15 hours a day. Strange things, you know.

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I\'d walk through the house and say, \"Here
were his cloth. And I\'m supposed to iron his

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cloth and take this cloth away. I can\'t
deal with this now. He, he\'s not gonna

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need them anymore.\" You know, these
immediate strange things that one says.

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And afterwards I kept thinking, \"Gee! Why on
earth would I focus on something so trivial.\"

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It, it\'s the only word I can
think two years. It\'s a total

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numbness. I was totally depressed.
But I really had no

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feeling. And people would say, \"Oh!
I\'m... you\'re

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afraid of being in the house on your own, you know, could
somebody get in. \" And, and I felt like saying, \" I wish they

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could and, you know, I didn\'t want to
live, you know. I couldn\'t see any point

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in living.\" I couldn\'t...

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Ah! Looking back now, some of the

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feelings and the thoughts I had were...
Seem so ridiculous. If I went up,

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if I saw an older man walking along, I felt like
hitting him because he had no right to be alive

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when Norton wasn\'t. Nobody had the right to

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enjoy life. The children\'s birthdays, on my
birthday, my, my birthday without her was a

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terrible day for me. Ah, her birthday.

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Ah, the birthday of my children,
our anniversary, Christmas. I mi...

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Miss. It\'s like uhm, series of
alarms that go off. And each of

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these dates spent in this
new way alone is just ah,

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horrible, horrible ah, tearing
open the wound again.

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When you have get-together, sometimes just
sitting down for dinner in the beginning

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was very hard because there
was an empty chair. Uhm,

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even we would go out as a family, there
was one missing always, you know.

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We\'d go out on a trip or something.
When we had fun. That\'s

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hard to think of. It\'s
that you\'re having fun,

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he\'s missing. He would have
had fun, too and he can\'t. So

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that\'s difficult. And that

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makes the whole experience of
grief so hard. Uhm, the fact

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that you, you can\'t enjoy your fun.

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You can\'t enjoy your pleasure, or
outings the way you used to because

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you feel guilty or because the
missing child isn\'t there.

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And then they\'ll be alternately times,
when a few days would go by. This

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is after some months after her death, when I
suddenly, suddenly break the whole issue of

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my loss, simply without of mind. You know,
it\'s getting busy teaching or busy writing or

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whatever. And I felt that, \"Oh! What a, what
a terrible person I must be that I\'m not

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thinking about this and I\'m not, you know,
experiencing grief as a continuous emotion.\"

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Uhm, I thought it was superficial unloyal
person I am that she isn\'t still

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the primary focus of all my energies
and all my mental processes.

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And uhm, slowly it donned
on me that in fact if I was

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always under emotional stress and wasn\'t working
it through and wasn\'t working through the

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pain that was always
underlying my feelings. Uhm,

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I wouldn\'t be able to function as
a person in the family or in the

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environment, whatever I was doing.
So, while it is

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extremely painful to work through these
experiences and to go through them over and over

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again, it\'s also very important. I don\'t
think if you\'ve really lost someone you

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love that you can just, I think,
walk away from it, forget it.

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Ah, I think one needs to defrag it.
And I think, men especially,

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ah, need help in confronting it because
men are ta... you know, grin to

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teeth, go on and we\'re tough, we\'re
agilient(ph) ah, we much are... men...

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Real men don\'t cry. That, that kind of
crap. Ah, which I think is very, very

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destructive. It\'s almost as if you were
isolated. You can see out, but you,

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you can\'t really reach the world. And
for someone to come through to you

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somehow and ah, understand you,
that\'s extremely important, to

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have someone to make that connection
between your isolation in the world.

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Uhm, and often the family will
not be able to do that. I mean

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that family\'s extremely
important, I think, but

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one is alone in one\'s grief, it\'s amazing
how one can be alone in one\'s grief.

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There\'s a limit to how much one can talk to
his own children. With my aged father? No. To

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my wife\'s sister? Word to my brother?
I have... there are few other family

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members left. And my friends,
you just simply... you know,

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you can... you really can\'t oppose that much
at, at friends because they have their loss,

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their own lives, their own pain,
their own whatever. I think

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the sort of person you need is somebody who\'s
very warm, and somebody who\'d likes you,

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who\'s fond of you, but not part of the
family. I think you need somebody

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outside the family. You need

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somebody who is detached enough that

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they can unders... they can talk,
you can talk to them, but they\'re

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detached enough that these things
are not part of their life.

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And so they can be detached and
give you counseling and comfort.

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It is as if you were really sick at
that time. And would be very helpful

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to have someone treat you that way. Uhm,

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not, not forced on you, but, but

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gently ask you. Perhaps it would be better
if you did that or this or the other.

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To allow you to just be with
your grief or with your falling

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apart. Because in this world, we haven\'t
got much time to fall apart. It\'s always,

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you know, be together. It\'s
like a wound that has to heal

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from the inside out. And
the healing never...

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Is never totally there. But
you, you don\'t expect that.

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You\'re just grateful for
the fact that some of the

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pain, or most of the pain
has disappeared. Now I

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can feel

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the times that I can,

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I can say ah, I, do you

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see what\'s happening to this Norton away?
We are managing.

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You need to sense that someone is there

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who understands this process
and could help to make it more

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bearable or less painful, by putting what you\'re
feeling in some kind of perspective and telling you

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the range of emotions you are feeling, or the
highs and the lows or remembrances, and the

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forgetting. Our all purpose, you know, there
is no right or wrong why they grieve and

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there\'s no... at one start to feel guilty and
one is thinking about the loss all the time.

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It\'s very important to have
someone tell you that ah,

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hah... It\'s

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okay to go out living.