FIRST YEAR OF GRIEF: Barbara Karnes Reflects with Diane Hullet

Get Griefy is proud to partner with the Best Life Best Death podcast to bring you insightful reflections on grief, loss, and caregiving. In these two compelling episodes, Diane Hullet interviews Barbara Karnes, RN, offering invaluable guidance for anyone navigating the complex path of grief. Whether you’re in the early stages of loss or looking for perspective on what the journey ahead may hold, these conversations provide wisdom, comfort, and practical insights.

Diane: I've been so moved by everything, Barbara, that you've written and shared about your personal experience this past year. Given all your knowledge and a lifetime of information gained as a hospice nurse, there was still so much to learn with the loss of a life-long partner.

Barbara: Intellectually I knew things, and I had studied and observed grief. But I had not had to deal with the emotional grief of losing a partner. You know, it's different. The grief of a parent, the grief of a child, the grief of a partner. I did not realize how completely each of these losses has its own uniqueness to it. So that was a big lesson. Big, big lesson.

Even as Jack was nearing the end of his life, I look back on it and thought how did I miss the signs?

A key turning point for me was two to three weeks before Jack died. We had this big confrontation. He's in bed. I brought in the food. He's not eating. He's getting mad because I'm bringing food, and I'm getting frustrated. He raised his hand and he points to the door as if to say “get out!” and I walked out of the room, and I stood in the hall crying, and I thought “I am trying to keep this man alive by the food, and his body is trying to die without food. And that was the "aha" moment when I realized I needed to offer, but not force when it came to eating. I realized in a new way the significance and the power that is in that. And what a hurdle this is for a caregiver.

Diane: I'm so moved by you phrasing it like that, that it's a hurdle for the caregiver. It's just the biggest thing to make that shift to saying, “We’re in a different place now.”

Barbara: Once I was back in my work routine, that realization is what led me to write my newest booklet, "Always Offer, Never Force". Because I truly realized how significant and how important understanding eating and not eating at the end of life is. I had to stand in that place to really appreciate the significance of what the caregiver was dealing with.

Diane: One thing you wrote about in this past year was the surprise of the loneliness of it. You had 60+ years of waking up and talking to somebody else, making breakfast together, sharing coffee, talking about the news, going to bed at night, and reflecting on the day… and it's just such a big, big change when a partner dies.

Barbara: I certainly did not realize the significance of it. I didn't think about it very much. Unless you've been in those shoes, and then you realize. For 65 years basically we were "a we", and then this last year I became "a me". And I don't know how to be "a me". I've had to learn what to do, and what I want to do because we would always consider each other. That's just how it was, for 65 years, and I didn't realize that in grief probably the biggest challenge in my grieving was to learn how to become "a me".

Diane: People certainly talk about the first year of losing someone being so difficult. What do you find as you sit here at the precipice of year two?

Barbra: I will say that one thing that surprised me was that in my grieving, in the early months and I'm saying months what kept surfacing was not the good times. It was the challenging times. It was like I had to process through those, cleaning house so to speak, and to do that I had to get rid of the dirt. And at first I thought, “Oh Barbara, you're a bad person. All you can think about is the negative stuff ”

But after a few months, literally months, I realized what was happening and that I'm not a bad person I'm a normal person. I realized that when someone dies, we immediately elevate that person to sainthood, and it seems that all of a sudden we don't even think about the negatives, the challenges. So I was thinking something was wrong with me. But I realized, from writing a blog about it and getting so many responses, people saying, “Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said this, because I thought I was a bad person too.” I realized that by “cleaning the house,” this helped me to see all the good stuff again, because I cleaned out the challenging stuff. That was a new aspect of grieving for me.

Diane: Do you feel like you said everything you wanted to say to Jack?

Barbara: Yes, I think so. Because I work in the end of life, I've learned from this to do and say what you want to do and say today, because you never know what tomorrow is going bring. I think in our relationship, there was that current-ness, because of this awareness of how fragile and precarious life is, not only with Jack, but with my children and grandchildren. I never let them leave without saying “goodbye” and “I love you.” Saying I love you is so important and you need to do that all the time, not just at the end of life.

Diane: I appreciate talking to you so much, Barbara, close to the one-year anniversary of losing Jack. I appreciate these reflections and your honesty about what this experience has been like for you. Thanks so much for talking to me today.

Barbara: You’re welcome, and you know I believe that I'm no different than anyone else, and if I'm feeling these things and don't understand them, then so do a lot of other people. So by my sharing, we can see how normal and natural grieving is.

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