Tender & Fierce With Marni Henderson

Marni Henderson and her sons had just 15 months to make memories and say goodbye after her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Today, we're talking about Marni's decision to pull her sons out of school to spend time with their dying father, what it's like facing big milestones after loss, and one of my favorite books—Second Firsts—that led Marni to get trained as a Life Reentry Practitioner. She's also talking about the annual widow's retreat she leads that's going to Belize this year!

Transcript

Thank you so much for joining us today and I'm so thrilled to have a life reentry practitioner among many other things on the show with us.

If you've been listening to Coming Back since the very first set of episodes,

Probably within the first five episodes,

I shared some of my favorite resources for coming back and Christina Rasmussen's work who trains life reentry practitioners is one of my all-time favorite books for coming back.

So I'm really excited to have you here on the show.

Marnie,

If you could please start us off with your last story.

So in 2011,

October,

We received the phone call that my husband had a brain tumor and it actually ended up being a glioblastoma stage four tumor.

And we spent the next 15 months as a family,

Every moment together.

I have two boys.

They were eight and 12 at the time that he passed away.

And we actually brought the boys home and did online schooling for those 15 months so that we could live as much as we could in that amount of time.

And then January 23rd,

2013,

He passed away.

And as with so many of us,

When we experience loss,

Our lives completely fell apart and anything we thought we had prepared for was not enough.

So that was five and a half years ago.

And my oldest son just graduated from high school and my other one's starting high school.

So our life is very different today.

And so that is my life changing moment of loss,

Losing my husband who I had been in a relationship with since I was 17.

So very much of how I functioned and how I lived was through him.

And I was 39 when he died and did not think that was part of my life's plan.

I thought for sure I was going to grow old with him and watch my grandchildren grow up.

And so yeah,

I have the widow status,

Although that changes the name,

The identity of that.

And so here we are,

We're still here alive and kicking five and a half years later.

I'm really interested in the decision that you made as a family to pull your kids out of school and to live life as close together as possible.

Where did that decision come from or what conversations kind of led up to that?

Everything seemed to simplify to moments.

Time became very precious.

And we were told right off the bat,

This was an incurable disease.

We never lost hope,

But the statistics were in front of us.

And honestly,

I wanted to focus my energy on being with my husband and my children being with my husband.

And they did try to go to school for the first couple of weeks and we found that they just were not present.

They weren't able to really focus at school.

And we realized that,

Well,

Fortunately my mother is a teacher and my father is a social worker.

And when I called them both and said,

Hey,

This is what I'm thinking of doing.

What do you think?

They both said,

Absolutely,

This is real life.

They will always be able to catch up with school,

But this moment right now,

This is real.

They won't ever be able to learn this in school.

And so we did,

And it was actually really neat because my husband was able to help them with their studies.

We took some trips.

He was a much better teacher than I was,

So it allowed that sweet bonding to happen with everyone.

So I am so grateful we chose to do that because the time ended up being so short.

We packed,

It feels like a lifetime into 15 months.

I'm so fascinated by your and your husband's decision to involve your kids in this because so many people want to keep their grief,

Keep their pain,

Keep their mourning separate from the lives of their children,

Thinking that if they do it will somehow cushion them from feeling bad,

Feeling worse,

Having trauma or negative memories that they hold onto.

But with your family,

It's like,

Oh,

We're going to all jump into the deep end of the swimming pool together.

I think it's so wonderful and I think it's something that so many other families should do.

And I guess I'm really focusing on your kids here,

But what did you tell them about your husband's brain tumors,

About how he would slowly or quickly disintegrate,

What to expect?

That was a journey in itself because when there started to be physical symptoms,

Changes in his personality with the brain tumor,

We had to be upfront and open.

So I suppose it was part of who we were before.

We wanted to be transparent.

It was real and we did run up against some hesitation from other family members.

They thought we were giving them too much.

And we did have the other support that said,

But this is real.

And that allowed us to be fully present as a family with each other to the point where we could joke about Tyler having a tumor and chemo brain.

And we have some really funny stories about how the boys would say,

That's dad's tumor,

Using the Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.

We learned that it was dad's tumor.

It wasn't dad.

He wasn't the cancer.

The cancer was in him,

But the tumor was creating the personality change.

And we shaved his head at home.

And when we shaved his head,

We left a big round circle of hair on top of his head and poked fun at him.

And he was in for the ride the whole way.

It also became a very spiritual journey for my husband that was very personal for him.

And so all four of us ended up in counseling before as he was dying,

The boys did art,

San Trey therapy,

Because there's not really anything they can talk about at the time.

And so when it came to the end,

Unfortunately,

It was hard for my oldest son to see.

He was having his major seizure that actually ended up being how he died two days later.

My son was there with the seizure,

Helped call 911 and then came to the hospital.

And my youngest son actually stayed with me.

He slept for two days at the hospital holding his dad's hand.

And they were both there.

The one time I will say,

They finally said,

And this was when it was imminent that he was dying,

We were in the hospital and hospice was there with us and they knew,

The amazing hospice workers knew it was within probably an hour.

And I asked the boys,

I said,

It's time,

Let's come in the room.

And they both looked at me and they said,

No,

Mom,

I don't want to be in there.

And I had to respect that.

And so we sat outside the door and hid under our family blanket and we kept it cracked,

The door cracked open just a little bit.

And then the nurse came and got us and the boys came in and saw their father and her dad.

And a lot of people have said,

Why did you,

Why did you let the boys see their father like that?

And I suppose it was a split second decision,

But we've never regretted it.

Those boys haven't because they clearly saw that their father was no longer alive.

He was no longer in his body.

They couldn't feel him physically and as painful as that was,

There was a closure,

Not immediately,

Obviously.

I mean,

There started a whole different path of pain,

But so they were there part of the process all the way to the end.

And it wasn't always easy,

But yes,

We were very transparent.

Yes.

I've never had anyone acknowledge that.

So thank you,

Actually.

Oh,

Yeah.

I think it's so important.

And what's coming to mind right now is a quote from one of my previous podcast guests,

Julia Samuel,

Who wrote a book called Grief Works.

And so many of her clients express anger at their parents regarding how they handled the death of their parents.

So a parent spouse.

And she said,

No one has ever expressed anger about being involved as a child.

All the anger comes from having it hidden,

Not being invited to a funeral,

Not being allowed to go to a memorial or even see that their parent is dead or has died.

Like there's a lot of,

You know,

These are moments,

You said it earlier,

These are moments that we cannot get back.

And so if we turn our lives into these series of moments,

We,

For as much as so many of them are joyful,

We're also agreeing to invite ourselves to every single one of them.

That's hard.

Oh,

Yeah.

Yes.

Hard.

Yeah,

But good on you for,

I mean,

Not only bringing your kids along,

But acknowledging they're not wanting to be involved,

And then acknowledging their desire to be involved.

Because that's,

It's,

I don't,

There's something about you honoring their autonomy as people and having separate relationships with their father than you did with your husband.

It's a different kind of relationship there.

And it's like,

You tell me when you can't take it,

And we'll honor that.

Because it is,

It is hard.

But there is something to be said as well about,

You know,

Seeing their dead body,

Especially between 8 to 12.

There's another episode of the podcast I did about understanding of death at different developmental stages as children,

But especially for kid kids under,

You know,

13.

To see someone dead,

It's like,

Okay,

It stops these stories of,

You know,

They're just sleeping,

Or one day they'll come back,

Or they're in heaven with Jesus,

And we'll see them again someday.

And there's other,

You know,

Kind of fantasy things that can almost hurt kids more.

So yeah,

Just honoring that huge space of like,

I'm going along for this ride,

My husband's going along for this ride,

And we're taking the kids with us.

Like holy shit.

Like wow.

And that's,

Yeah,

We did.

And because,

And it's ironic,

Because my,

One of my greatest fears,

As my husband,

We were aware that he was dying,

Was that he would die without me.

I was his caregiver.

I mean,

I,

We were attached,

All four of us,

So closely.

And I wanted to be with him when he died,

Holding his hand.

And interestingly,

I felt him,

Within those last couple hours,

Tell me,

It's time.

Let go of my hand.

It's,

Now your focus is on the children,

Not me.

And it was actually hard,

Because I wanted to be the one to be with him when he died.

And he was,

Even in his state of,

You know,

He was unconscious.

He,

Nope.

Okay.

Times are shifting.

You need to transition to the kids.

And it ended up being beautiful.

His parents were with him.

And so,

Yes,

Now the grief journey afterwards,

You know,

Probably isn't as graceful.

But when the four of us were together,

Walking with his death,

Yes.

Can you talk about the weeks,

Months,

Even years after,

Five and a half years after?

I even get,

Yeah,

It's five and a half years.

And if I go there,

To what it felt like those days after and the weeks after,

Very dark place,

The darkest place I've ever been in and numb and completely not functioning and devastated.

I had someone say,

It's almost as if you look like you've lost half of your body.

And I said,

Well,

I have.

I've lost,

How I wake up and function every day is not here.

So I don't know how to do this.

I've never,

Since I was 17.

And my children became,

Honestly,

The reason to get up each day.

Because they just are.

They are,

I love them more than myself.

It's that being a parent,

It's our heart walking outside our body.

And so slowly,

We began to start functioning,

Whether it was,

I remember the first time we stepped out of the house and we stepped into the front yard.

And a neighbor drove by and said,

Hey,

Good job.

He'd be proud of you.

And I looked at him and I thought,

Yeah,

I guess you're right.

I guess going into our front yard was pretty brave.

But it was the first step.

And lots of panic attacks.

My oldest son didn't want to live.

I didn't want to live.

And we got right into our family counselor again.

And we just kept going one day,

One week at a time and kept talking about what was going on.

We were very vocal about it.

And then we take another step and they went back to school.

And that was a whole other phase of functioning with our grief because my husband was a football coach.

So my oldest son actually said he didn't want to go to that school anymore because he's going to school and all of the football players are saying,

Where's your coach t-shirt?

Oh,

You're the kid whose dad died.

Oh,

Are you the football coach's son?

And he came home and after a bit and he said,

Mom,

I need to go to a different school.

And I didn't understand what he was doing at the time.

It scared me actually.

But I trusted him.

And so he,

Starting his ninth grade year,

He went to a completely different school.

He asked that I not tell any of the teachers,

That his father had passed away.

He asked that I not tell the principal.

He wanted to be Tyson.

He wanted to be himself.

He wanted to create his own identity.

And I am so proud of him because it ended up being what he needed.

Whereas my youngest son had separation anxiety.

He had to be in a classroom with two or three of his friends.

So the teachers actually helped us each year keep him.

They would place him in a class where he had two or three different friends that were next to him because he was,

You talked about the different ages.

He was eight,

Nine,

10.

And so we stumbled a lot.

And it's five and a half years later,

Graduation day,

Those monumental days,

Right?

Anticipatory grief,

You can prepare for it and it's still painful.

I'm still mad he wasn't there on graduation day.

And I know my son wishes he was there.

So yeah.

I'm wondering outside of your son's lives,

What had to change for you?

Were you somebody that felt like you needed a total identity overhaul?

Like I need to be somewhere different where nobody knows me as a widow?

Or were you a rally to support like your younger son?

Or were you kind of somewhere in between or it depended on the day?

Like I'm kind of like zooming in from your life with your kids.

What exactly was this time like for you?

That's a really good question.

I think I was somewhere in the middle.

There were days I wanted to take off and I wanted to go to a place where there was this amazing like nanny babushka that would take care of me and watch over my children so I could just sleep and I could just mourn and I could cry because so much of my grieving was motivated for my children to grieve.

A lot of times I put my grief,

I hid it so that I was stronger,

Strong for the boys.

My journey ended up being that I completely am rediscovering myself and that's been scary and it's been exciting and some days I am this fierce woman with an amazing Wonder Woman cape standing on top of a mountain like yeah,

You know I'm doing this and other days really want that babushka grandma to come and just hold me and tell me that my boys are going to be okay and to just let it go.

So what's happened from that is yes,

I am very different than I was before in the sense that I would say.

Reviews

Thank you🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻I was fascinated by the story, and then it cut off in the middle. It showed that I had been listening 21 min, and that was the amount of time this talk was going to be, yet I am left wandering and very curious. I am 3 1/2 years into my own journey, it is very different, and I wanted to hear more about “Life re-entry coach” or whatever term was used. Any possibility to re-download the full conversation?
Thanks in advance!🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻