May 24, 2026

Been there, done that, and a toolkit for respair

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, cancer, creative writing, death, Family, grief, growth, love, marriage, surviving, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Star of Bethlehem, aka Grass Lillies, growing amidst the rhubarb and weeds in the unkempt vegetable garden, May 2026.

It’s different this time. I’ve been here before. A second-time widow now 14 years older, wiser, more prepared for the storm ahead. I knew I could fall deep into the wake of sadness.

Back when it was my first time, I thought I would die from the pain, so deep, so shattering I couldn’t imagine life going on.

I was in Yekaterinburg, Russia teaching on a Fulbright grant when I first got the news of this diagnosis. Keith hadn’t been getting better, even saying its just a lingering case of bronchitis. He promised me he’d go back to his doctor as he dropped me at the airport and we kissed goodbye.

As studious as I was, I was uneducated in the lingo of cancer, or the many euphemisms it could go by. Sitting in my hotel, and so unnerved by Keith’s ambiguous yet clearly unhopeful words he’d texted to me, I was desperate to reach back out to him.

I found a way to make a phone call over Skype by paying for a phone number. When the call went through, I could hear how surprised he was when he saw the local number but heard me talking to him from over 5000 miles away in the middle of Russia. But I had to hear his voice. I had to make sure I wasn’t overreacting.

I could hear his weakened voice muddied by exhaustion from tests he’d undergone while I had been away, unplanned but supported by my daughters. Metastatic Liver Disease, he said, though I wasn’t sure what he really said until it sunk in minutes later.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I replied.

“Nope”, he reluctantly and quietly agreed.

“Do you want me to come home?”

“Yes,” came the nearly whispered reply.

And at that I knew how serious it was. Usually the midwest stoic, Keith had always pushed through and never asked me for help when it came to his healthcare. But not this time. Now, he needed me and I was on the other side of the world.

Usually the midwest stoic, Keith had always pushed through and never asked me for help when it came to his healthcare.
But not this time.
Now, he needed me and I was on the other side of the world.

As I ended the call, quiet “I love you’s” exchanged, I felt trapped. I needed to scream, to cry, to shout. But I feared being seen as the crazy American in this industrial Russian city. I already was pretty much the ONLY Amerikanski here.

I took a different route and had the good sense to go and cry in the shower so few could hear me. But as the water poured over me in the modern white subway-tiled shower, I slid down the wall into a pool of tears and rain shower droplets, trying to cleanse myself of this deep despair.

That was the start of the first time, and the most painful, most despairing experience of my life. The only thing that kept me from ending my own was the knowledge that my own daughters needed their me, their mom. I needed to get home.

Fast forward to the present.

Here I am, now wrapping up a year into my second term as a widow. So many projects left undone. So many questions I would ask Steve as I tried to take my first steps. But the springtime came anyway. And now I stare out at the untended and unplanted vegetable garden patch where we would have tilled and replanted our tomatoes, and beans, and spinach.

Me and Steve, fishing from the shore after we’d sold the boat about a year after he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, June 2024, Big Fish Lake, Ortonville, Michigan.

It has been hard, for sure. I loved Steve dearly, my second husband, in a different kind of love than my first husband. As an older relationship, we were not hampered with career growth, or raising young children. All adults, Steve brought six children to my two. And they came with their various partners, and growing families. Together, we enjoyed a life we built that was happy, supportive, loving, playing creatively, like two overgrown kids.

When the diagnosis came, Stage IV Lung Cancer, something switched on for me. Survival mode. There were Caregiving tasks that needed to be addressed. Appointments to be made, and people to keep in the loop.

Over the next 2-1/2 years, PTSD from my earlier loss would creep in. But I managed to keep my outward crying to a minimum. We would use whatever time we were gifted to try and continue to live a happy life together, with as much or as little as was required to do that, even if it was just sharing a sweet smile, a loving embrace, and the quiet “I love you’s”.

I realized that what I feared, even more than losing Steve, was also losing this beautiful family he had brought with him. And most directly, losing Sam and his family who had become close to my own older daughter’s family, and who would visit often, despite his long distance. When I shared this with Sam, I was met with a loving reassurance that we’d always be family.

His last few weeks were both physically and emotionally challenging. Ups and downs, exhaustion, tears, laughter, and moments that could be the making of a comedy skit. That is, if it weren’t the end.

His last few weeks were both physically and emotionally challenging. Ups and downs, exhaustion, tears, laughter, and moments that could be the making of a comedy skit. That is, if it weren’t the end. So when Steve died, a sort of numbness took over that was somewhat familiar to me. It served me well enough as I got through the first months after his passing. It is a type of emotional survival mode that would carry me through the worst of it. My caregiving duties were over. Now I could sleep through the night and work on caring for myself.

Between the chaotic weather and my aching back, I’ve given myself permission not to replant the whole vegetable garden. Maybe I’ll just do potted tomatoes and herb plants on the upper deck again this year.

Now, as I looked out at all the various weeds overgrown from my second-story perch, I couldn’t make out what is really there in the untended patch. It just didn’t look like a vegetable garden anymore. On my next walk around at ground level, I made a point to check into the weedy fenced-in patch, ignored and now mocking me with the warming weather after a long cold dark winter.

To my surprise, the already overgrown rhubarb persists even now, despite a decade or more of neglect. It was first planted on other parts of the property by the original 19th Century owners of the property, and has survived constant disruptions of the land over the last 180 years.

And amidst the weeds that filled in the gaps around the rhubarb, starlike white flowers peaked through their thin green leaves that I’d never seen here before. These abundant patches of Star of Bethlehem grass lilies sparkled with hope as the season of new life and purpose unfolds before me.

To make sure I take care of myself in this new chapter, I remind myself to lean in on my toolkit for grief. It is one developed from years of practice living with hope, death and respair, a long forgotten word meant to describe finding fresh hope after despair.

And so, it is is with respair in mind, that I share this toolkit for navigating a journey through grief:

  • Practice compassion. For yourself, as well as others. You never know if the one you’re speaking to is going through a difficult time, as well.
  • Breath. Never forget to. When I was learning to scuba dive, the instructor knew that when the beginner diver goes under water – complete with all the breathing gear – their instinct is to hold their breath. We can’t keep holding our breath, even when we may feel like we’re drowning in grief. Just… breath.
  • Feel all the feels. There is no timeline on grieving. There is no schedule for it. Something triggers a memory – a song, a bird, a word – and the wave overtakes you. And you find yourself in a puddle of tears. Let it out and after the tears, a lightness may take over.
  • No one can take away your grief. But having a friend or companion who is a good listener can definitely help. And if that’s not doable, for whatever reason, find a compatible therapist, an objective listener trained for just such purposes.
  • Scream and cry if you must. Do it safely so that you can still wake up to another day.
  • Read a good book. Even when it makes you cry. Joan Didion’s “Year of Magical Thinking” brought me all the feels. I needed to know I wasn’t alone in these experiences.
  • Make something new. There’s a certain spark that comes with a new adventure, no matter how small.
  • Make something familiar. There’s comfort that comes with revisiting the familiar tasks that become your meditation.
  • Write it down. Share your story in the written word, as much or as little as you need to. Writing it down is like casting it off into the stars.
  • Take a walk, if you can. Especially in nature. This afternoon, I could admire the Star of Bethlehem grass lilies that found ways to create a sparkling view, even in the midst of my untended and unplanted vegetable garden.
  • Cry, dance, and sing when the music plays.
  • Grant yourself grace. Especially on the days when it seems too much.
  • Practice smiling again. It may feel awkward at times, but eventually it will become natural again.
  • Give yourself permission. To cry, to love, to be happy…
  • Talk to him/her. They’re still listening.
  • And as time passes, be open to the growing possibilities of future happiness in life.
Keith and me at the opening of an art show featuring our work at Buckham Gallery, Flint, Michigan, 2010.
 

February 8, 2026

Traveling on the Edge

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under creative writing, Education, growth, mental-health, surviving, Travel, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Mara Jevera Fulmer
Hammock contemplation with dog. • Photo by author

Listen to an audio version of this story below.

He was sitting on the floor, hanging onto my leg, deep fear palpable on his face reflecting the anxiety-ridden content of a note that I was now holding in one hand. My other hand was holding the beachouse phone, the only outside line at our location at this little backpack hostel owned by a friend of mine. I’d brought my students to Fiji, about 18 of them including another instructor who wanted to come along. My husband and oldest daughter among them. I’d been encouraged to design an international study tour to a place I’d lived and worked in, to bring these students from an urban community college in a rustbelt town to the tropical paradise in the middle of the South Pacific.

It was supposed to be a beautiful learning experience, but one also fraught with stress because I had other reasons for coming back. I still had a home here, friends, adopted family. And my immediate family ached to see them again after following the news of political unrest from the previous year. The evidence of that unrest was still apparent in the ruins and graffiti that covered an old lighthouse-turned-restaurant on the coast, outside the capital city.

Workshops had been arranged, visits to cultural sites scheduled, and a student interchange between my Flint students and the university journalism students in Fiji who’d been trying to do their work diligently throughout the turmoil of the previous year. 

The group arrives at dawn. • Photo by author

Even an art exhibition was scheduled where my students would share their own conceptual self-portraits on the walls of the national museum, while also learning that week about the work of indigenous artists in the region.

But none of that mattered at the moment. It was only day 1 of the trip and Allan clung to my leg on the floor, fully engulfed in a nervous breakdown that would eventually break me down. The voice on the other end, his mother, sounded in my ear – “Life would be so much easier if I only had one son,” she said. Shocked by her words, I later would learn she was at that moment suffering the shattering of her own mental health.

My next moves were swift. I’d had the forethought to have students sign temporary healthcare POAs since the college I worked for was not yet prepared for overseas study tours at the time. And so I reached out to my old doctor on the island, explaining the situation. He quickly arranged for us to meet with the only psychiatrist in the country at his office near Suva, the capitol, over an hour and a half away. I called my friend, the owner of the beachouse, who’d been renting my home. And he quickly arranged for my dear student’s belongings to be moved to his own private room with a caregiver, a kind Fijian man who served as the gardener most days.

The rest of the trip moved ahead fairly well. His classmates rallied around Allan, including him when he seemed up to participating. And supporting him even after our return to the states. Two other students, Jimmy and Will, became very protective. Jimmy especially would check into the classroom on the days he knew Allan was supposed to be there to make sure he was doing okay.

But about six weeks after our return to Michigan, 9/11 occurred. My dear student had no support outside of school and so looked devastated when I had to tell him that the college was closing and he had to go home. 

In the ensuing weeks, as we all struggled to regain some kind of equilibrium from this post-9/11 new world order, we missed the signs. One Friday, Jimmy came into my office to tell me he hadn’t seen Allan in class the day before. And just as Jimmy went back to work in the lab outside my office, my phone rang. It was Allan’s old girlfriend. 

Her voice crumbled through the phone lines. “He’s shot himself,” I heard her say, just before I screamed myself – “SHIIIITTTTTT!!!!!” The rest of the details laid bare that he had fallen deeply into his psychosis in the weeks after 9/11 while struggling to complete his school work that included a post-travel piece of art. 

His classmates came together again to mourn his loss, struggling to understand the depth of his pain. Later, I would be given his artwork, portfolios, and black books – sketchbooks where he’d plan out his graffiti art. It was among these pieces, I discovered where he was going with his final piece. And in a dream, I saw it completed and I made it so. 

It took nearly a year to put together the final follow-up exhibition. Students struggled to redefine who they were post travel. But who were we after a trip to the other side of the world, meeting others who’d faced unrest in their own backyard? Some had come back thinking that maybe their own lives weren’t as bad by comparison, coming from the rough streets of this former bustling automotive factory town. But 9/11 turned everyone’s world upside down, seeing the attacks on our own country. And even the geographic distance from that horror shrunk further when weeks later, the students learned that their friend had given up on life and ended his.

One student came to me and said, “l’ll need to redo my post-trip self portrait. It’s too balanced, too static,” they said. Life had had too many twists and turns and they needed to reflect that balance as if on the edge of falling.

Beachside meditations • Photo by author

Looking back on this group of inveterate travelers from a quarter century ago, this old woman feels something not so much as grief, but awe. The healing gift of time has shown me that Allan’s nervous breakdown and death maybe weren’t bookends that defined a tragic legacy. 

No. With a longer view, I can see it wasn’t a legacy with a tragic ending, after all. Instead, it was the launching of incredible maturing and growth by so many of his fellow students, now adults with established careers and grown children of their own. Longterm friendships were built, regardless of distance, connections that would endure through darkness and light. And most importantly, there was profound resilience. 

Because life is a journey filled with triumphs and tragedies. And the only way to keep upright through it all at the edge of balance is to keep moving forward, knowing that – though we might not always see them – we are not traveling alone.

The above prose was expanded from a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.

 

January 30, 2026

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, death, grief, love, marriage, mourning, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Michigan fall sunset view from my back porch.

I thought I would break.

We’d just begun a new chapter of being just the two of us again, children grown, new challenges and opportunities… after 34 years together, like young newlyweds, the world would be our oyster again hiding the pearl we knew would glimmer and shine its lustrous colors upon us. I’d rushed back from an overseas trip only to find myself now in charge of your healthcare.

And then you were gone.

So abrupt, from diagnosis to death in less than three months.

Crushed, angry, resentful for you having left me right when the adventures were getting even more interesting than the 30+ years before!

I restarted my studies, knowing that if I just immersed myself in the work I could hide away from my grief, ignore the wound in my heart. But by Christmas, I sat crying on the side of the bed…

I just. want. a hug.

I’d tried a dance class, a restorative process where I could lose myself in the movements, and connect to my grandmother, a dancer in her own day. You never wanted to dance with me… though there was that one last time. But still, the movements and the music began to heal me.

I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The dreams were so vivid that I looked forward to your visits. But the loneliness wouldn’t go away. Perhaps, if only there was someone, not one of our children, or friends, or anyone who knew you. Someone I could talk to who didn’t have your ghost to guide the conversations.

And then he reached out and I ignored him. Each week he’d check in. “I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he wrote. And I finally couldn’t stifle the laugh. The nerve, I thought. So we wrote to each other, first just a couple of times a week, then every day, and then we’d talk all night.

“I wish I could dance with you, ya know,” he wrote offering to join me in a dance class when he visited. It became our connection. He was awful at it, and I loved him for it anyway.

As we shared our stories with each other I realized it wasn’t just my tears that were falling for the one I’d lost. He cried for it, too, a life of wonder and adventure that he hoped to build with me.

And then… we did.

The above prose was written as part of a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.

 

January 23, 2026

Before & After

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, death, friendship, grief, love, marriage, mourning, surviving, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Happy times. Me and Steven were wandering the wineries of the Mission Peninsula in Traverse City. June 2019

Before grief, I spoke the language of we. What were we doing today? Even if we were working separately our days rotated around each other like two stars in synchronous orbits, each shining our light upon the other with love and kindness. 

Before grief, I still grieved for my first love. But you stepped into my life, two roses in hand, with a smile so bright it still makes me laugh when I think of it… Memories can be both healing and hurtful in their teasing. But I’d rather the smile, than the tears.

It was always like that with us, my sesame chicken to your homey meatloaf. The doctor and the hillbilly, the designer and the maker. We were in sync in this third chapter of our lives and I was looking forward to a long one together. But it wasn’t meant to be, I guess. The dogs sleeping on your side of the bed has a way of reminding me of that.

So now I speak of possibilities, though I am charting a new path without a roadmap to guide me. No late night nudges to ask you “Is this possible?” And for you to answer me “of course it is!” I miss that. But grief can’t take away my dreams, not completely anyway. They have shifted, adapted, and are still remolding themselves.

[A]fter grief, I’m learning to believe in myself again.

I’ve been through this before. And I know that it can only lead to something bigger than myself. That my life is not just a big empty house in a forest filled with darkness.

After grief, I’m learning anew. You always knew that I was a lifelong learner. Back to school again and again and again. But now it’s not what I know or who I love that matters. It’s what I believe. And after grief, I’m learning to believe in myself again. To apply the lessons of the before-times to a party of one with room to invite fellow believers.

That’s harder than it sounds. But I’m working on it.

The above prose was written as part of a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.

 

October 9, 2025

Waking Life

Posted by Mara Jevera Fulmer under beginnings, death, Family, grief, love, marriage, mourning, surviving | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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This continues my effort at catching up on reminiscences and memories from over the summer and early fall 2025.

Steve resting on a random office chair in the middle of the woods, Fall 2022.

Tuesday, 9/9/2025, 1:20 am

One of my favorite tunes came seeping through the haze of my sleep as I napped Monday afternoon, exhausted from being up so late the night before. I really NEEDED that nap.

Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill, 1977, hummed through as I caught the words. 

“I did not believe the information, just had to trust imagination, My heart going Boom-Boom-Boom”. “Son,” he said, “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”

Yet my dreams were unformed. Just the lyrics and tune floating through them.

“When illusion spin her net, I’m never where I wanna be. And liberty, she pirouette, When I think that I am free.

As the notes wafted through my dream state, my consciousness began to float upwards to just before wakefulness.

“Watched by empty silhouettes, Who close their eyes but still can see.
No one taught them etiquette. I will show another me.”

And then I saw him, standing in the woods, the golden colors of fall leaves surrounding him, just as he had been when we went on that hike before we discovered his cancer. But rather than sitting alone in an office chair in the middle of the forest, he was standing, looking back over his shoulder towards me and smiled.

“Today, I don’t need a replacement. I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant.
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”

He turned to his left and reached down to a very small child, a little boy, Richard. And somehow I knew it was the brother he’d never met, one who died as a young child, and who we discovered only when we went to write Steve’s obituary when we reviewed his mother Florence’s. 

As he looked back towards me, I asked him: “but where is your older brother, John?” The first born child of Florence and Charles James, John had died in an automobile accident when he was only 19 years old and it had devastated the family. 

And no sooner had I asked this question when a taller thin young man appeared beside Steve on his right side. Steve turned away and the three of them walked off into the forest.

‘”Hey,” I said, “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”’

And my eyes open to see his smiling face in the photo across from me.

Steve and Mara (author) wandering around the countryside.

 

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