In August of last year, after an eight-month battle with cancer, my husband, Jeremy, passed away. We had flown back to his native Australia for his final weeks. He loved his home and his people too much to be anywhere else in the end.
There’s no handbook for how to be a person after losing your person. Yet somehow, I stayed afloat. I planned his celebration of life, spent time with his family, wrote his eulogy, canceled his credit cards. You know, just a regular to-do list. But inside, I was drowning.
I call this phase “grief drunk.” You’re handed the keys to a car and told to drive, even though you’re completely out of your mind. I wasn’t in my body. (I’m still not in my body.) I was hovering above it, watching myself do impossible things.
Jeremy chose to be cremated. A few weeks before he died, we had one of many brutal but beautiful hospital conversations. He gave me a list of places he wanted his ashes spread. One of them was Sydney Harbour. So I planned to do that before flying home.
Jess, one of his best friends, drove me to the crematorium. I couldn’t have done it alone.
