In This Together: Building Resilience When Your Partner Has Cancer

47. Making Plans for When They are Gone

• Season 2 • Episode 47

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In this episode, I explore the emotions behind planning for life after your partner dies of a terminal illness. This kind of planning isn’t about wanting your partner to be gone or being cold to their suffering. Instead, it’s a way to find hope, balance your emotions, and imagine a future beyond the pain of caregiving.

I’ll discuss how planning helps you cope, offering an emotional escape and something to look forward to during an overwhelming time. While it won’t take away the grief or pain of loss, it allows you to prepare for a life that still holds moments of joy and rediscovery.

You’ll hear stories of women who found solace in making plans—whether it was creating a bucket list, booking a trip, or envisioning a new chapter, when their husbands were in the final stages of cancer. These plans are not a rejection of love but a way to survive and move forward when the time comes.

As a Resiliency Coach for people who are caregiving for their partner, I'm here to support YOU, the caregiver. Learn more about my work at www.coachmarika.com.

Marika Humphreys:

And welcome back to the podcast. As you listen to this, if you're listening in real time I will be actually on a plane to a small island in the Bahamas and I'm super excited about that. I have not taken a long vacation in quite some time. So my boyfriend teaches a class for students one of the smaller islands in the Bahamas where there isn't much except a old research center actually that universities send students to for research, for classes like this, and he's going to be there all month and I'm going to go join him for about a little over a week. So it is not luxurious accommodations, it's old buildings and the food isn't anything fancy. It's like cafeteria food that we'll be eating, but there will be amazing marine life and lots of snorkeling and sun and just a really cool experience. So I'm looking forward to it. Cool experience, so I'm looking forward to it.

Marika Humphreys:

Okay, so let's talk about today's topic, which is planning for life after your partner dies, which may sound a little strange, but one of my goals with this podcast is to talk about the things we face as cancer caregivers that most people don't understand unless they've gone through something similar. A lot of the feelings and thoughts we have are really hard to understand ourselves, and many times I find that my clients feel guilty or bad for the way that they're thinking or feeling. But having been through this myself and having coached many people through this time, I see a lot of trends and commonalities, and so I want to bring some of these hidden thoughts into the open and explore them and help you understand why you're doing what you're doing or why you're thinking the way you are. And I want to normalize these experiences, because cancer caregiving is hard enough without us adding additional judgment or shame to it. So today I'm going to talk about something that I've coached many clients through recently, and I think it's something that most people would be afraid to talk about with even their closest friends because they would be afraid of being judged. So, as I mentioned, what I'm talking about here is planning or even fantasizing about the life you want after your partner dies. It's way more common than you realize, and it doesn't mean you're a horrible person, okay, so let's dive in.

Marika Humphreys:

So, as I mentioned, recently I've had several clients who are facing kind of the impending loss of their partners husbands in this case and one of my clients I'm going to call her Mary her husband is nearing the end. About six months ago they were told that he would just have weeks to live, and so when a trip that she had been wanting to take for a long time wanting to take for a long time it kind of came across her radar. She looked into it and found that there was a wait list for it. But she put herself on the wait list and she told herself look, if I get in, it's a sign that this is something I need to do. And she did end up getting in, and because it was scheduled for several months away a period of time when she imagined that she was going to be in the depths of grieving her husband's death she put down a deposit and it was just a way to give herself forward a few months. And the trip is coming up and her husband hasn't passed away like the doctors expected. In fact he's relatively stable. So now Mary is not only trying to cancel the trip, but she's also feeling foolish and frustrated with herself for scheduling it. So I want to tell you that making plans for after your partner passes, after your partner passes, even if you book a trip and put money down, it isn't foolish and in fact I think it can be really important way to stay resilient through very difficult times.

Marika Humphreys:

So some examples what I'm talking about here is making plans for the future, when you expect that your partner will be gone, and for most of us, that's a time when you're expecting to be in widowhood and grieving, and so thinking about or planning for trips you want to take. Maybe you've always wanted to go to Europe, or a big move you want to make. Perhaps you've always thought about moving to a different city or living in a different state. Or it could simply be smaller things, like something you wanted to buy, maybe just changing up certain routines you have. It could be planning to take a class or learn a new hobby.

Marika Humphreys:

One of my clients, nancy, she began filling out her bucket list. It was an app she found and you could sort of put down bucket list things, and she did that while she was sitting next to her husband's bed in the hospital because it gave her something to dream about, even as she was losing her partner and the life that they shared. So what I mean is when I talk about planning for your life after your partner dies, is anything you do that's around imagining a life beyond the current reality that you're in of caregiving and coping with the weight of a terminal diagnosis and impending loss, and I really, really want to make clear that planning for your life when your partner is gone isn't a sign that you don't love them, even if you have a strained and difficult relationship with your partner, okay. Thinking about life afterward doesn't mean you're being cold or detached and it doesn't mean you're trying to rush them to the grave or ignore their suffering. For the clients I've had, and for most people, especially if you're listening to this podcast it's not about wanting your partner to be gone. We might think that's what it would seem like, but that is not at all what that is about. It is about creating a vision, something to hold onto. It is about creating a vision, something to hold onto when everything in your life feels bleak and like it's slipping away. So, quite simply, it's a coping mechanism. It's a way to navigate the overwhelming emotions of caregiving and loss and uncertainty.

Marika Humphreys:

Coping with cancer or coping with your partner's cancer diagnosis, is often a long and arduous journey for everyone right, and it's likely that you are tired and worn out, and so when the end is near or at least it seems like it's near, it is natural to start picturing what life could be like without the weight of this disease. So you can be loving someone deeply and also start imagining a future for yourself when they're gone. In fact, I would say that it's not only okay, it's actually really important to do, because it helps balance love for your partner with the hard reality of their illness, right and loss or impending loss, and that can give you a lot of emotional relief during very challenging times. So why we do this? Well, I've already talked a little bit about it. Right, we plan because we need something to look forward to.

Marika Humphreys:

When you're in the depths of caregiving, it is hard to imagine a future that isn't just full of grief and pain. The present is hard and the future seems hard. So planning something to look forward to in that future is a way to believe that life won't always be this hard, that there's more ahead than just loss and grief and pain. Imagining the trip you'll take or the hobbies you'll start gives you hope, right For a lighter chapter in life, and that can be really precious to have precious to have. For the clients that I've coached through this, I would say that this kind of future focused thinking often comes up, most often when their partner is in their stages of illness. So you're coping with the reality that the end is near and you start naturally your brain is going to go to what is life going to be like without them? So fantasizing or making plans for that future becomes a tool to navigate the difficult reality of watching their decline. It can be a form of an emotional escape. So, because it lets you step out of the often relentless emotions of the present right the medical decisions, the grief, the uncertainty, the challenges of caregiving and it also gives you a way to believe in a future, feel like a very distant thing. So in that way it is an act of self preservation by having something to look forward to, something that brings joy and possibility. It gives you an anchor for the present, which is probably full of challenges and heartbreak.

Marika Humphreys:

I want to tell you about a recent client of mine. I coached her several months ago now. We often talked about her rather detailed plans for her widowed life. She had thought about all the places that she wanted to go, the things that she was going to do, the career moves that she wanted to make in her business, and it was really kind of a roadmap for her for the life that she wanted. And she loved her husband deeply. She would tell me he was the love of her life, so it wasn't like she wanted to lose him. But she also knew that she needed to believe in life afterward, like she really needed that anchor because it helped her believe that she was going to be okay and could be happy again. And so he actually passed away earlier this year and she grieved deeply and then she got to work on creating the next version of her life and I really think the fact that she had so thoroughly thought about this, this chapter, this next chapter and what she wanted from it and pictured it, it helped her move through grief. It gave her something beyond.

Marika Humphreys:

So on the other end of the spectrum, I have also coached a woman who couldn't imagine life without her husband, and she was a strong, intelligent woman. She had grown kids and a career as a pediatrician, but the idea of losing her husband was so difficult for her she literally couldn't imagine going on. So sometimes we're on that extreme and that's why I say it's healthy and good to think about that life when they're gone and think about it in a positive way, because the alternative is not so good. Right, we need to be able to believe in a better future for ourselves. It's actually a really important part of creating the resilience necessary to keep going. It helps you believe you will be okay, that you will get through and you will find your way.

Marika Humphreys:

So one thing I want to mention here also is that, while I think there is definitely a place for this for future planning, I also want to make clear, though, that it shouldn't be a way to completely avoid the emotions of the present. You want this kind of thinking to be a little bit of a distraction from the pain, right, a way to temporarily kind of shield yourself from, sometimes, what can feel like crushing emotions of the present. Right, a little bit like a mental vacation, imagining the life where you're not weighed down by these really heavy challenges or consumed by, you know, your partner's illness. But you don't want to stay on a permanent mental vacation. Right, it's not a strategy for getting through the present. Ultimately, escaping our present pain just doesn't work, just like all the ways that we try to distract ourselves from difficult emotions through food, alcohol, media. They can work in the short term and sometimes we need to do them in the short term, but they're not a long-term solution. We still have to be willing to open up to our emotions, but we just don't want to use those ways of escape as a way to avoid the emotions.

Marika Humphreys:

And the other thing that I want to point out and I think it can be tempting to imagine, is that when you're planning that trip, for when you imagine that you're going to be in the depths of grief and loss, that trip, that amazing trip, won't erase the pain of the loss, it won't stop the grief from showing up and it won't allow you to skip the process altogether. I planned after my husband passed away, I planned a vacation with my best friends from high school for like six months in advance, and it was in the fall of the following year, and I just wanted something to look forward to. But when that trip came, we actually went to Vegas for a weekend, a long weekend, and I ended up crying the whole time Not quite literally the whole time, but I cried extensively during that trip because I was grieving and so much of being there reminded me of my husband and what he would have loved about it, and so I want to share that story from my own life to say that I want to share that story from my own life to say that all these amazing things we plan, they aren't going to help you escape the emotions that you still need to go through and move through. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, right, I still was so glad that I was there with my dear friends who all knew my husband well and could support me through that time. I just want you to know what to expect, right, don't expect that you're going to be able to let go of those emotions just because you're on a beautiful beach and the emotions won't stay behind. Right, we will take the emotions with us or, even if you do manage to distract yourself for a little while, they will be waiting for you when you get back.

Marika Humphreys:

So the future plans that you have are not a way to escape the pain and the experience of grief and loss that you will have. So planning and having those trips or plans is a helpful tool, but it's not an escape from the process. It isn't a way to avoid grief or escape the pain of loss. They won't erase the heartbreak of losing a partner or the complexities of this transition or the complexities of this transition. So when we make future plans, it isn't and it shouldn't be about denying the reality of what's happening in the present, but rather finding a way to endure the challenges of it while also believing in a better future. So I actually would encourage you to think about life.

Marika Humphreys:

After what will you want to do? What would you like to try? What are things that you've been putting off or always have thought about? And use those plans to build your resilience, to believe in yourself and your strength. You will find a way to go on. You will navigate through the pain of loss and grief, but don't use those plans to think that you can avoid those difficult emotions, as tempting as it may feel, and especially because you've probably been dealing with challenging emotions for a long time and are probably worn out. But you can't escape grief, and it's important. It's an important process and the quickest way out of it is straight through it.

Marika Humphreys:

I remember wanting to skip it when my husband passed away. I just wanted to skip over all the pain that I knew was ahead of me. I remember thinking I wish I could just skip this year, all the work that I imagined it was going to be to adjust to life without him, to adjust to being a solo parent. But you can't skip grief, and instead you can actually learn to view that period as beautiful and sacred and something to be embraced. And when you can even start thinking about it that way, it will change how you think about and what your vision is of the process of going through grief. It can be beautiful and it can be sacred, all right.

Marika Humphreys:

So to wrap up planning for life after your partner dies is not about wanting them to be gone. It's about surviving the now and believing that it can be better in the future, that you will get through and you will move on and find a way to find joy and happiness again. So it's a way to find hope and maintain some sense of control in what is a very uncontrollable situation. But it is a coping mechanism, right, it's not a cure. Grief and loss will still come, but so too will moments of joy and connection and rediscovery. So when those moments come, when that time comes, I really think those plans can help you move forward, can help you take the step forward. All right, my friends, I hope that sheds a little light on something that is probably not something we like to talk about with anybody, but is actually very normal for people who have a partner with cancer. So I hope that was helpful and I will see you next week.