When my husband was ill with cancer, I had to be at my optimum health in order to care for him. Looking back, this was just the beginning of my journey through life after loss. I was about to turn sixty,a milestone birthday, but I couldn’t fully appreciate it because what was happening at home was the constant backdrop to my life. Despite everything, I felt healthy, energetic, & strong, save for the ordinary aches and creaks that come with everyday living, plus I still considered myself young. However, what I didn’t realize was that subtle changes were already taking place in my body.

As Chuck’s illness progressed and he ultimately entered hospice care, our home had to be retrofitted to meet his needs. A hospital bed replaced our bedroom furniture, a walker stood where there had once been open space. Shower grab bars were installed, along with countless other reminders that illness had taken center stage in our home. However, soon, that grab bar quickly became an eyesore to me. “I’ll remove it when it is no longer needed,” I thought. “When Chuck can stand on his own again.”

About six weeks after my sixtieth birthday, Chuck passed away. In an instant, I was thrust into a netherworld, floating between galaxies, swinging from star to star searching for my North Star. Simultaneously, that grab bar became even more offensive to me. What did I need that for? I could walk, I had good balance, I was steady. I could step in and out of the shower without help.To me, that grab bar represented old age, frailty, weakness, and painful memories of watching the man I loved lose the ability to stand on his own. I decided it belonged to Chuck’s illness, not to my future and it had to go. As I prepared to remove it,and make other changes throughout my home, I was also trying to preserve something even more important-my health. Wellness became paramount in this new chapter of my life. I scheduled doctors’ appointments, determined to stay ahead of whatever changes my body might be experiencing. I sought peace wherever I could find it, even visiting spas in different cities simply to soothe my achey body &  weary spirit. To my surprise , each appointment seemed to reveal something unexpected. One day, my optometrist looked at me and said, “You have cataracts.” Cataracts? That couldn’t be right….cataracts were something old people got.” I remember walking out of the appointment in complete disbelief. I wandered into the L’Occitane boutique on the Upper West Side and bought several of my favorite scented products while I could still see their beautiful packaging. But then, perhaps I was simply looking for a little retail therapy.

Next came my knee. It had bothered me for some time, but physical therapy and anti-inflammatory medication had allowed me to keep moving. Then the rheumatologist reviewed my X-rays and calmly announced, “You’re bone on bone.” “Bone on bone? What happened to the torn meniscus?”I couldn’t understand how my body had changed so quietly without my noticing. Soon afterward, my lower back flared up and imaging revealed arthritis in my spine. Then came bursitis in my shoulder, and plantar fasciitis in my feet, one diagnosis after another. Fear quietly settled in, not because I feared aging itself, but because I feared losing my mobility—the very thing that represented my independence.

For the first time, I had no choice but to face an uncomfortable truth, I was no longer young. I had entered another season of life. Losing a spouse has a way of bringing your own mortality into sharp focus. Death no longer feels distant or theoretical, it becomes personal, intimate , close enough to touch.I knew I couldn’t control every diagnosis, but I could influence how I responded. Thus, I made changes. I examined my eating habits, my exercise, my stress, my priorities, and my spiritual life. I became determined not simply to survive widowhood, but to live fully within it.

My father often said that life was never meant to be lived haphazardly. There is a way we are meant to travel through it along with a purpose waiting to be discovered. It isn’t a carousel ride where we blindly reach for the brass ring and hope for the best.Sometimes we must descend into the deepest parts of ourselves—into our pain, disappointments, regrets, losses, abandonments, and heartbreak—and do the difficult work of excavation & only then can purpose emerge. Often, that purpose is born from the very experiences we would have gladly avoided. And if we refuse to do that inner work, those we love often bear the weight of our unresolved wounds. I held tightly to my father’s wisdom and I committed myself to the quiet spiritual work of healing while also honoring the physical needs of my body.

My dear friend, the late Bob Ellison, who also lost his beloved wife, Lou, once shared something I have never forgotten. He said that “one day he realized he wanted to live just a little more than he wanted to die.” That tiny flicker of light became enough for him to keep walking, enough to keep choosing life. I discovered the same truth for myself. No one can make that decision for you.

There comes a moment when you realize that the greatest obstacle standing between you and your new life is often yourself. Ironically, the shower grab bar never came down.The very object I resented because it reminded me of loss eventually became something I needed—not because I had become weak, but because I was working to become stronger. As the years passed, another grab bar was added. Surprisingly, neither one makes me feel diminished. Instead, they remind me that accepting support is just fine.

As I continue to grow, to heal, and bloom, I have learned that strength isn’t measured by how little assistance we need. Sometimes strength is found in accepting the very things we once resisted. As for my grab bars that to me once represented my husband’s final days, they have become quiet reminders that life continues to evolve, and so do we. Sometimes the things we are most determined to remove from our lives become the very things that steady us as we learn to relive life anew.

For a long time, I thought I was searching for my North Star and perhaps I was. But along the journey, I also discovered the things that would steady me until I found myself again. Sometimes, when things fall apart, they also reveal what will hold us up.