July 22, 2015, 6:09 a.m.  
Wowza.
These were the last moments of George's life, exactly one year ago.  In less than 3 hours, he would collapse on 8th Street and never get back up.  His heart decided that day that it had given and opened and loved as much as it could in this lifetime, and it was time to move on.  But George continues to love, even if his heart is not beating.  His energetic heart is stronger and more present than ever, in his spirit and in the thoughts and actions of everyone who loved him.  

George had a lot of fans.  Everyone loved George.  There is a lot of love left in his legacy.

I have been fearing this day for a long time.  I have been pondering what to do, how to spend these "last moments", who to spend them with, where to go.  I am sitting at my kitchen table, our kitchen table; I am in my pajamas.  I am taking it minute by minute, as these things have gone since the moment I learned of his death.  There is no place to be.  There is nothing to do.  There is only me, and my thoughts, and my heart.  And my love for George.  I have everything I need wherever I am, whatever I do.  None of that decoration matters.

George died this day last year.  
​Around this time, he was sleeping.  Soon he would awaken and shower and put on his jeans, then his blue button down shirt, and look so handsome standing at the side of the bed.  Then he would tell me I was sexy as I stretched and perched on all fours to relieve the baby pressure on my back.  Then he would kiss me goodbye and say, "I love you so much."  As he always did.  Then he would kiss my belly goodbye.  Then he would leave through the garage, and I would never see him again.

Oh, I wish I could hear the garage door open and know that it was George coming or going.
Oh, I wish I could believe he was still alive.  
But then again, I don't.  

It's too hard to have glimpses in my mind of -- "Oh, George is still here, right?  Because he is so near to me in my mind and heart!"  -- only to realize a second later that no, of course, George is still dead.  My heart breaks a little more all over again.  So I don't wish to believe he is alive.  I wish to know he is dead.  I wish to accept this and be thankful for all the reasons I miss him.  I miss him because I love him so dearly.  I would not trade this love for the world.

I wonder why the 1-year mark is so significant, why we spend weeks and months anxiously anticipating the day.  It's just a day like any other day that George is not here.  It doesn't hurt any more or any less.  It is a new day.  It is a different day.  It did not rain last night.  It is not Groundhog Day.  George is not going to die again today.  George died once, and he never has to do it again.  And I don't have to keep my mind hostage thinking about it like there is something I can do at 9:03 a.m. today that is going to change anything to bring him back.  It is a different time altogether.  Nothing in the world is quite the same as it was one year ago.  

We put all of this emphasis on these anniversaries, but we are only imprisoning ourselves with the idea of time, and that it means more than another step into the future.  It is just a way of guiding us forward, moving us constantly and steadily into the next phase of our life, the next adventure, the next opportunity, the next glimmer of hope.  We try to look back when we have lost things we didn't want to lose.  We grasp at them, grasp at the memories, our own distorted realities of what we imagine happened in a previous life.  We mourn them and we torture ourselves with longing, and we think somehow this makes our grief more meaningful.  It does not.

My grief is no more today than yesterday, last week, last month.  No more today than tomorrow.  In fact, my grief is more polished today than ever before, distilled down to its essence, broken into its components and understood for all of its qualities.  Six months ago, I knew there was grief, but I could not sit quietly with it, I could not tell you how it made me feel.  My work over the past 3 months has been rewarded with a new relationship, that of me to myself, to my pain and grief, to the parts of me that I didn't want to uncover or accept.  It is this new relationship that will power me forward into my new life.

And, I am... almost... ready.  

There was a life I wanted with George.  There was a life that I thought belonged to me.  One year ago, that dream dissolved.  My expectation of it did not.  I have been holding onto the dream of the dream, the desire for something that will never be mine.  The desire for something that was never mine to begin with.  And, as comforting as it is to hold onto the things we love and attach to and identify ourselves with, there is a time to Let Go.  To continue to perpetuate this attachment is to deny myself the gift of living fully.  It is to keep my being in the past, to keep George in the past, and to keep a distance from everyone around me who is here to share in the gifts of a new world.  Choosing to let go is not to say I let go of George, but I let go of the life we hoped to have together, the presence of his body, and our relationship as I knew it.  We have a new relationship now.

And choosing to let go does not mean that I do not grieve.  I can continue to grieve through while exploring this new landscape of living life without George.  "Living" being the key word, which is very different from "Surviving".

I survive by breathing.
I live by leading.
I am a different person than I was one year ago.  I am in many ways a more complete and more wholly formed human.  I have a space in my heart where human George lived.  That space is now free to dream and explore and embark on new adventures.  This is the magic and the power of the human experience and our inherent strength and resilience.  We have the choice -- we always have the choice -- to charge into the future, choose the unknown, embrace the delicacy of life, and be Free.  
​<3

I had an epiphany late one night, shortly after George died, when I realized that we had done this before.  This long distance thing, this missing each other thing, this being apart.  Six months after we started dating, I quit my job and left San Francisco to travel the world alone, return date unknown.  And while we acknowledged that it might be impossible to continue our relationship during this time, we wanted to try.  George would reference the lyrics to Joshua Radin's song Everything'll be Alright -- "There's a hole in my pocket that's about your size, and I think everything is gonna be alright."  

​"I'll be peeking from your pocket," he would say cheerfully.  

I remember how real it felt to have him with me on my travel adventures, how it was he who would cheer me on as I hiked to the top of a mountain, or hold my hand on the way down so I wouldn’t fall.  I was away for nine months, and our relationship only grew stronger during that time.  Could we really do this now, like we did back then?  Was this just another phase of our relationship, our connection unbroken, where we would continue to share and grow and learn from each other, even from a distance?  George had always trusted things would work out between us, even at the beginning, even as I anticipated my travels and told him that I needed to be free… what kind of trust did I need now, to know we would still make this work, still do this together?  

Now he is free.  I am free, too.  And yet, we are connected in a way that is untouchable.  Perhaps there is no greater gift than this.

Below is an email exchange from fall 2010, when I was in Cinque Terre, Italy, at the beginning of my travels.  The parallels between then and now are striking.  I also love that he uses the word "celebrated" to describe the names on the graves, and that he finds the connectedness of the playgrounds and cemeteries on the top of the hill "profound and breathtaking".  Reading this, I don't think he was scared to die.  He knew there would be another playground waiting for him, ready for him to explore.

My dear sweet George, you are celebrated.


*******************
From: George Schnakenberg
Date: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:54 PM
To: Joanne Chang

Hi Beautiful!
It was wonderful to chat with you today!  I know the last couple days have been hard.  I miss you so much.  It is such a strange feeling to wake up missing you and know that I will be missing you for a long time.  I am excited that you exist though and I know that we are very very lucky to have this connection in the first place. So I accept and take it on with vigor.  It's beautiful that we can share what we have together and take the time to learn about ourselves.  I think that is rare and I embrace it. I remember being lonely in Cinque Terre too.  It is so beautiful that you want to share it.  I remember that feeling and I'm there with you when you are lonely, or when you are happy, or taking in an amazing view.

I ate at the restaurant in Manarola right by the wall near the edge of the water.  The view is incredible.  If you eat there, or wherever you eat by yourself, know that I am with you, smiling.  

I love the playgrounds in Manarola.  Although I can't put my finger on it exactly, there is something so profound and breathtaking about both the playgrounds and cemeteries feeling like they are up there at the top of the world.  Not to mention, there is something really grounding when the names celebrated on the graves above, are the same as the names on the doors in the town below.

I love you, Joanne. Rawr!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo!  
George


**************
From: Joanne Chang
Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 10:42 AM
To: George Schnakenberg

Hi honey, I ate at the restaurant in Manarola by the water, Marina Piccola, and thought of you there.  I've been thinking about you everywhere, it's really nice to have you here with me :)
I also thought of you last night at this really wonderful little restaurant in Corniglia called Mananan.  I snagged the last table, the place was fully booked up but I got lucky.  I wrote something in my journal when I got home and decided I want to share it with you.  I've actually never done this before...it feels crazy and fuzzy to be able to write something so candidly and to be able to share it with someone.

Here it is, completely unedited.
I love you.  xoxoxo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10-7-10, Cinque Terre (day 3)
...Night time o'clock.  I just had a fabulous evening at the wine bar in Corniglia, followed by a lucky strike at Mananan, and it was so much fun and I had the biggest smile on my face all night.  Then I came back and missed George and started crying, tears flowing like faucets.  At the restaurant I felt him with me, I really did, it was a little surreal, I could imagine him sitting across from me; I could see him there, I smiled at him and imagined holding his hand, the two of us so happy to be there, enthralled by the liveliness of the owner.  Enraptured with the energy of the place.  I teared up, the feeling of him there was almost so real I was sad knowing that it actually wasn't...that I was sitting across from an empty seat, no place mat, alone.  No George.  When I came home I started going through pictures on the camera and there's this one of him by the crepe stand outside the Gare du Nord; he has this beautiful gaze, not smiling but just being, and I could almost touch him, looking at that picture.  I could feel his face, run my fingers through his hair.  He is so close to me.  I'm crying now, I'm not sure if it's out of sadness or the amazement of what I'm able to feel and experience with this person from thousands of miles away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**************
From: George Schnakenberg
Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:51 AM
To: Joanne Chang
Joanne,
Wow.  Thank you.  Thank you.  That is so incredible.  It captures the moments we had, the moment I had in Cinque terre, and the feelings I have for you so well too.

It's insane...I'm thinking about when I looked directly into the lens of your camera outside Gare Du Nord, so so happy to just BE there with you, and also literally looking into the lens so you could connect with me later....no joke.  It worked.  I'm speechless.  

I'm tearing up at work....feeling your hand here with mine.  
xoxoxoxo
​George
**************

When George first died, I was mostly sad for him, mostly sad for Nova.  I was angry at him too, I remember (an irrational displacement of anger), but mostly, I was sad because he would never get to hold his little girl, revel in the family he created, bask in our love.  He was so excited and proud to be a father.  And it was snatched away from him in his last moments of joyful anticipation.

I was sad for Nova just the same.  She would never get to meet the amazing man that created her, she would grow up without a father, she would not be as joyful and sparkly and happy without him in her life.  He would be just a story to her.  He would never be the warm cozy body, the soft kisses, the playful man to chase her and tickle her and throw her over his shoulder.  She had been robbed of one-half of her life before she was born.  And the fun half, too.

Now, I am sad for me.  A year later, my heart cries and my mind rambles on about how much I miss George, how I (still !!) can't believe he's gone, how I lost my perfect charmed life and all the questions I have about what happens next.  To me.  On the one hand, I am totally self-absorbed.  Me me me me me, this thing happened to me, and nobody else but me (not true, I know, but it feels distinctively lonely in here).  My egotism makes me sick, and I don't know how to turn it off.  

On the other hand, George, who was once the beneficiary of my sadness, has himself moved on.  He has moved on like everyone else.  He is at peace, he has accepted our fate, he is no longer attached to this life or his body or his merely mortal dreams.  He even told me, two months ago, that this was part of a greater plan that he and I (he and I!) had devised and signed off on many lifetimes ago.  I listened for a bit, then told him to hush.  I am still grieving, can't you see?  I am not ready to embrace this as our quest for infinite eternal love.   Thank you, but can you please come back later?  
I am no longer sad for George.

And I am no longer sad for Nova, because look how happy she is!  She got George's happy genes, and I inherited his goofy antics and sound effects and I've learned to make her laugh.  She is not sad.  She has George in a way that nobody else does.

But me, I am still me, and I am still sad, and I have not fully accepted that this is how things are supposed to be.  I still mourn my dead husband.  I still dream of what could have been.  I still torture myself with thoughts of his warm body next to mine, his eyes pouring all this love into me, so vivid and so real I want to die, knowing it is just one heart's beat out of reach.

​Maybe it is time to call George back.  Maybe I've taken this grief to the end, and it's time to make some magic happen.

These two journal entries were written 5 days apart, illustrating grief’s constant ebb and flow, the impermanence of any one emotion, and the myriad of feelings that arise when a loved one dies, including heartbreak, anger, guilt, shame, gratitude, hope, acceptance, shock, confusion, fear, loneliness, and many many more.  In short, grief makes you feel crazy.

*****************
March 1, 2015
I am tired today but still feeling grounded in life/George/death and still feeling calm.  God, I miss you George, so much so much.  I would do anything to hold you, to see you hold and giggle with your daughter, who is one insanely beautiful and amazing human.  We really made a magical creature and the world is a better place because Nova is in it.  She brings so much joy to people’s lives with the power of her smile.

I know you are not here with us, at least not in the physical sense.  I know you are somehow a part of the greater consciousness though, that you have awareness of my continued existence and of Nova’s existence; that you love and care for us and want to protect us.  I know you wish us love and joy and happiness, and I feel...I hope...you are at peace.  I am getting there.  

It’s a challenge to reconcile the life I just had, that I remember so vividly, so recently, with this new life without you.  I feel like a very different person now, and in many ways I can’t relate to the woman who married you and carried your child.  She was spoiled and privileged and sheltered and blind.  She was self-involved and self-interested and took what she had -- the fortune of love, partnership, a future family -- for granted.  She was afraid, but not of anything real.  She was petty.  I am still some of these things, but I sure have a greater appreciation for the present moment and what is good that exists now.  Impermanence is constantly on my mind.  I really wish I’d been able to be happier when I had everything in the world that I could possibly want.  I wish I’d worried less and played more and put my self interests aside to love you more.  Because you really deserved to be loved.  I wish I’d been more attentive and less absorbed in my own dramas.  I wish… I’d really really really known how fortunate I was to have it ALL.

And, I guess the thing is that I do still have it all -- a beautiful healthy happy child, a warm, safe and cozy home, a supportive family and community, wonderful neighbors, my own health, my own perseverance and will and strength to continue this journey…
Jeffrey says I’m doing all this with a lot of grace.  I hear that a lot actually.  I don’t really feel graceful, I told him, in fact I feel like I'm fumbling through this; but there must be that quality in the way I interact with the world, somewhere down the line I learned to live gracefully.  It’s coming in handy these days.


*****************    
March 6, 2015
Wow.  This journey is f***ing crazy.  I just read what I wrote last, and … the guilt!  I have so much guilt about not loving George well enough, but I DID love him well, I loved him very well, and I cherished him completely and did everything I could to make him feel loved and secure and wanted.  I always told him he was the one for me, that I loved him to pieces and was so happy to have found him.  I told him how lucky I felt, how lucky Nova was to have him for a father.  I don’t know what I really wish I’d done better, other than… well… I didn’t always feel amazing because I didn’t always feel complete.  I still don’t feel complete.  But that has nothing to do with George and everything to do with me.  My lack of security does not mean I loved him any less than 200%.  Because I did, George.  I do.  I love you 200% to infinity.  I know you knew this and still know this.

I came upon this photo last night at Toast & Michelle’s wedding, and it just killed me.  He looks so solid and happy and peaceful.  So REAL, like I could reach out and touch him.  And just like that, I’m thrown back into a state of WTF?!?!?  Spinning again, not comprehending this loss, holding George’s ashes and not knowing how or why he’s gone.  He was just here.  And now he is in a box on my lap.

Suddenly my life makes no sense.  My past seems illusory.  Or too real for the present to also be real.  How can my past and present both be true?  How can this life change so explosively and leave me holding a box of ash?  Just like that, the calm quiet period I’d had, vanished.

I am back to -- um, no, I don’t get it.  Where is George?  He was real, right?  I really knew him, I really loved him, what we had was so real and SO GOOD, how could it be over?  Life just came and took him away from me, just stole him from my morning sleep.  I kissed him goodbye one morning and then he was gone forever.  Yes, I believe I have a right to be angry.  Angry at life.  Angry at death.  Angry because it f***ing hurts and there is no one to blame.  There is no one to hold me through this, not really.  I am the strong one.  I am the mama.  I am creating every way possible for me to move on with my life but I am leading this charge and there is no one beside me, shoulder to shoulder.  I am carrying my daughter.  I am carrying my husband’s ashes.  I have support but they all look to me to tell them what to do.  I do not know what to tell you!  I need help but the truth is, you can’t help me in the way that I need it, because you are in charge of a different life, your own.  What I need is someone to share in the responsibility of my life with my daughter, and there is no one who can do that.  Everyone has their own life to live.  So, I lead this life, and Nova’s life, by myself.  And I grieve for George.  And my heart screams for him.  My heart is SO BROKEN, it is so so broken.  
And I feel crazy because he is dead but I feel he is real.

Somehow I am supposed to continue to feel his love without his words or touch or physical presence.  I am supposed to just know by feeling, sensing, believing that he is all around me and that he loves me.  This is faith, I suppose.  Is this George religion?  Ugh.  Haha.  Honestly.  I do not know how to survive this.  I am tired.

Nova being out of the house brings me back to the time before she was born.  The house suddenly feels like it used to, without her presence here.  Like George is out and I am home alone… except he is not out, he is dead.  Holy f***.

It’s amazing, really, how I keep my shit together for Nova.  I’ve lost it several times in the last hour and it’s only because she is not here.  I don’t know how much emotion I’ve contained inside because I don’t have the space to let it out.  I find it so hard to cry in front of her and to sob hard, to make those fixed painful faces that your face just makes when you cry really hard -- I don’t want to scare her!  She is so happy and smiley and innocent.  Why introduce such misery and sadness?
But oh, I really need more space -- more than zero -- to cry and release and let it all flow out.  There is so much.  It’s like a war zone in there.

A few days after George’s death the Medical Examiner’s Office called to tell us that no cause of death could be determined from the autopsy.  They had opened up his entire body, examined it piece by piece, and found everything in perfect order.  There were no occluded blood vessels, so heart attack was ruled out.  There was no internal bleeding, so stroke and aneurysm were ruled out.  There were no signs of trauma, so he didn’t die from hitting the parked car.  His heart.  Just.  Stopped.  Beating.  Just stopped.  They couldn’t tell me why.  How does a healthy man’s 38-year old heart just decide to stop beating one day?  And not just any healthy man, but George.  That was my heart, that was Nova’s heart.  How could there be no explanation?

The thought of George on an examining table, a scalpel slicing neatly through his scalp and frontal midline, his brain and heart and vital organs being removed and held and examined, is horrifying.  It is the most horrifying horror story I can think of.  I have to keep reminding myself that he was dead.  He felt nothing.  But what if he did?  And they didn’t even find anything.  All those horrifying images I now have to live with, and we are no closer to understanding why he dropped dead one day.  It was a Tuesday when he died.  That’s all we know.  

They sent blood and tissue samples to the lab for further testing.  Nothing could be concluded by the naked eye, but perhaps the lab results would provide some answers.  They wrote “Pending” on his death certificate, and told us it could be awhile before the final report was complete.  It took nine months for them to finish that report.  And the labs were inconclusive.  In the end, they assigned “Lethal Cardiac Arrhythmia” as the cause of death, based on no other probable conclusion.  I suppose it was accurate, his heart did stop, he did have an arrhythmia.  But why?

My mind was consumed by all the existential questions.  What is the purpose of George’s death?  What does this mean for him, for me, for Nova?  Why us?  Why was I chosen to go through this?  Why was he chosen to die?  The answer that came to me was both comforting and infuriating:  

George is needed somewhere else.  He has been chosen to do higher work on a higher plane, work that he could not have accomplished in this life, in his body.  You have been chosen because there are things you need to do in this life that will be informed by this experience, and you are strong enough to handle it.  And in the end, it is all about Nova.  She is at the center of it all, for reasons that will not be revealed to you for some time.

Even in my darkest hour, I am being told to believe that everything has a reason that is purposeful and good?  That is so fucking infuriating.  

At the same time, it was comforting to know that something greater than me was at work.  That I couldn’t have done anything to save George from dying.  That everything had happened exactly as it needed to happen, and that no amount of wondering “what if” would change anything.

I was somewhat surprised by my spiritual conviction around something so personally tragic, this inner voice that was spewing intangible esoteric stories about why my life was ruined.  Because no matter what beliefs I’d had about life, death, soul, and non-physical realities, this was now happening to me, and my belief system should have been shattered.  I tried to argue the voice of “this is not fair and there is no good reason for this and I am a victim and I will never be happy again,” but it did not stick.  Nothing made sense to my human mind, but something within me understood that what was happening to us was sacred.  That although this was not at all what I wanted nor expected from my life, it was part of a larger plan, and I needed to trust the Universe.  

But knowing this did not lessen the pain.  The pain was excruciating, and I couldn’t fathom a life without George.  I did not want this reality, no matter what that voice said.  I resisted it with every bone in my body.