Surviving Solo Conference Helps Teach Skills For Coping With Grief, Loss

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Wednesday 17, 1996): Don Barlow is a keynote speaker for Saturday’s Solo Strategies Conference. He was misidentified in a Tuesday story.

Death, as we know, can come at any age.

Acceptance of that fact, though, can be difficult. For some of us, it may even be impossible.

Paul Lewis faced such a struggle in 1992. When his wife, Sandy, died of breast cancer that October, Lewis’ initial reaction was disbelief.

“One of the first thoughts that hit me was, ‘Wives aren’t supposed to die before their husbands,”’ he says.

Especially when those wives are just 46.

But Lewis, who turns 53 this month, did find acceptance. He did find closure.

But he didn’t do it alone.

After his wife’s death, Lewis attended a Solo Strategies conference. Originally formed to help widowed men and women cope with their loss, the annual conference offers a series of workshops, panel discussions, keynote addresses stressing personal experience and post-conference support groups.

This year, when Solo Strategies begins its 1996 event - the 11th Spokane edition - at Spokane Community College on Friday, the two-day affair will include three different keynote speakers. The topic is “Male Perspectives in Grief,” and Lewis is one of three men invited to tell his story (the other two are Steve Belzman and Don Barry).

Lewis’ tale is both sad and inspiring. And it doesn’t just include the death of his wife. Last May, his 28-year-old son committed suicide; six weeks later, his father died of natural causes at age 80.

An accounting instructor at SCC for the past 26 years, Lewis recalls being dumbfounded when his wife was first diagnosed with cancer in early 1991. It seems now as if their last 18 months together went by all too quickly.

And maybe from a medical point of view it did.

“The doctor said that it was the most aggressive breast cancer that he’s ever treated,” Lewis says.

But things didn’t proceed too fast for Lewis to figure a few things out. One was that there was no time for regret.

“We had to make life-and-death decisions, literally, and I couldn’t worry about what had happened prior,” he says. “We couldn’t worry about what he (the doctor) could have done. We had to make decisions based on where we were then. And after she died, I was pretty well able to maintain that philosophy.”

Another realization Lewis had involved the need to take care of himself. His wife helped him with that task by encouraging him to get on with his life.

“She said, ‘Paul, you’re not going to be able to do very well by yourself, and I expect you to find somebody else,” he says. “There were some things that we didn’t get to share because she moved on a little faster than I had anticipated. But she pretty well was able to close everything that she needed to close before she died, which also was helpful.”

But whatever he learned on his own, Lewis was thankful for the support he found both from the 1993 Solo Strategies conference and the support group meetings that he later attended.

Sharing his experience, he discovered, was key.

“One of the things that happens is that you start having poor concentration,” he says. “As one of my friends said, ‘When it happened to me, I thought I was losing my mind.’ And, of course, when she found out that was a pretty common occurrence, she felt better about herself.”

The theme of this year’s conference is “Male Perspectives on Grief.” And Lewis sees the basic difference between the way men and women process grief in how that process is linked with tradition.

The traditional view: Men are the stronger sex.

The realistic view: Strength is a relative quality, especially as it deals with emotions.

“Men are dependent on our wives for emotional needs (in ways) I don’t think we realize,” Lewis says. “Men, I think, don’t see the loss as it’s happening as much as after it’s over. Then they really see what the loss is to them.”

This, Lewis discovered, is especially true for older men, who come from a generation in which working women were a rarity.

“Their loss was tremendous because there was always somebody there making the home,” he says. “Most of them were retired, and all of a sudden all of the things that they took for granted were gone.”

That wasn’t Lewis’ experience. His wife had been a Spokane attorney. Still, he says, he had a difficult time making long-term plans after her death.

And he found himself screening any potential dates that came along.

“I haven’t dated anybody who hasn’t lost somebody special in their lives,” he says. “And part of that is because it’s really difficult for other people to appreciate some of the things that are happening to you.”

And continue to happen. Only now, nearly a year after the deaths of his son and father, is Lewis able to fully look at the pain surrounding those two events.

“The mind controls,” he says, “because it really does only allow you to handle what you can deal with.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Charles Waltmire

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONFERENCE Solo Strategies, a conference for widowed persons and those who care about them, will be held Friday from 5:30-9:15 p.m. and Saturday from 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. at Spokane Community College’s Lair Conference Center. Fees are $15 ($10 for widows and widowers); a separate charge applies for professionals. For further information, call 484-8636 or (800)344-SOLO.