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Emily: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome to episode number 59 of the brave widow show today.
I talk with Sara Keoskey. Sara was a caretaker for her spouse all the way through their entire marriage. And even through all of the doctor visits, the surgeries, the ICU stays, just the overwhelmingness, is that even a word? The overwhelming points of her life.
She kept going and she has some really nice insights and encouragement for widows or those of you who are or have been caretakers for your spouse. And I think you're really going to enjoy her story before we dive in. This is November by the time you hear this podcast, and we have several live events that are happening.
Coming up, uh, we always have our winter solstice event that is happening in December 21st. It'll be our second annual winter solstice event. It's in the evening, so [00:01:00] if you're working during the day, you can still attend in the evening. We'll have a panel of widows that you can hear from who will share parts of their story, who will answer some of the most Frequently asked questions, the most pressing difficult questions that people tend to ask.
You're going to get to hear from each of them as they share their thoughts on that. And one of the best ways that you can know about when these events come up about what things are happening is to be on the email list and to subscribe to that. And you can find that at Bravewidow. com slash free F R E E.
Brave widow. com slash free. If you're not signed up on the email list, go sign up right now. If you're driving, wait till you get home. Wait, do you get pulled over, but sign up for that? Because you'll get to hear about all of the free things that we do to give back to the widow community. The winter solstice event is a ton of fun.
We have. Uh, games, we have [00:02:00] music, we have activities, we give away prizes. You get to hear from other widows and connect with them. You get to meet other widows. It really, really is just a great time. You're probably going to cry a little bit and laugh quite a bit as well. As you know, we widows sometimes have a great sense of humor, some of us a little darker humor than others, but we have a great time and the reason we do this on winter solstice is because Christmas time can really be an emotional trigger for people or the holidays in general can be a really difficult time to get through, especially if you're in your first year or two, and you're trying to navigate all the emotions with that.
So we try to do something very special for widows. And I wish I could remember who gave me this. Tip on winter solstice for the life of me. I can't remember who it is. It's not my idea I wish I was that creative but the concept behind hosting something on [00:03:00] winter solstice is winter solstice is the longest night of the entire year and The reason we want to do something for widows on that evening is because even though Your days may be dark You may feel like the darkness is never going away, that you're never going to get unstuck, you're never going to see light again.
Every day moving forward is going to be a little bit brighter. And I just thought that was such a beautiful concept to host something, especially around the holidays, that is specifically meant for What does so come join us on the winter solstice event. If you're not signed up, come sign up again. The best way that you can hear about all the free things, the live events, the community what's going on is to be on the email list and you could sign up at brave widow.
com slash free and you'll get some free. Downloadables as well, some [00:04:00] checklists, some courses I have out there, all kinds of things that you can use for free, you can share with a friend, they are out there for you if you go sign up. Alright, Sara's story is really one of resilience and perseverance and Just a wonderful humility and service to her husband.
I think you're going to really enjoy her story and some advice that she has to share with you. Let's dive right in.
Emily Jones: Welcome to The Brave Widow Podcast. I'm your host, Emily Jones. We help young widows heal their heart, find hope, and dream again for the future.
Emily: Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Brave Widow show. I am here today with Sara Keoskey and I'm so excited for her [00:05:00] to share her story and to talk about what her journey has been like and to share some of her insights and tips for some of you. So Sara, welcome to the show and thank you for coming
on today.
Sara Keosky: Thank you for having me.
Emily Jones: Oh, yeah, I'm definitely glad to have you here. So if you don't mind, if you would share for our audience a little bit about your background and who you are, then we can dive into your story wherever you like to start.
Sara Keosky: Basically, I am a 40 year old widow soon to be 41. I've worked in the medical field for next to 20 or yeah, 20 years when it comes to.
My late husband, I met my late husband when I was 21 years old.
Where did you meet him at?
Oh, gosh. I actually, back then you had where people just like popped up on the internet on you.[00:06:00] I don't even know where he grabbed me from. No, no clue, but he popped up and we had spoke for quite a few months. And then I finally went, well, if you want to meet in person, I'll meet you.
I met him, I'm going to, this is going to sound horrible. I met him at a bar that I knew that I had multiple friends that worked the bar. So, that's actually where I met him. And I met him on his 33rd birthday.
Emily Jones: Oh, okay. Now it was just like AOL instant messenger, Yahoo chat room, like that kind of thing.
Sara Keosky: It had to have been, cause I don't even know where he kind of popped up on the screen back then I was so ignorant to. Really how they worked. So he kind of popped up across the computer screen and it was just small chat and I'm like, okay, cause I really, I didn't use it back then.
Emily Jones: Yeah, it was kind of a, uh, that's actually when I first started talking to my husband, Nathan, he messaged me through AOL instant [00:07:00] messenger.
And back then, you know, that was dial up and all that. And I didn't meet strangers off the internet. There was no online dating.
Sara Keosky: Like, a lot more common today. Yes.
Emily Jones: All right. So you're smart though. You're going to meet on your turf where, you know, you have allies in case, you know, you, something goes wrong or he's, sketchy or whatever.
So how is that first interaction? Did he just like sweep you off your feet immediately? Or did it take some time to win you over?
Sara Keosky: He was very quiet. It was very sweet. Like, he was a very big man, though. He was 6'2 he was 270, very built male. But he, it just, which is so opposite of what I'm normally attracted to.
He was just so quiet and reserved, but very polite at the same time. So, it took a little bit, but him just almost showing. I don't know he cared and you could [00:08:00] tell he could just tell he was a genuine person. So it's probably what got me the most was that he was a very genuine person.
Emily Jones: Right. Okay. So how long did you guys date?
Sara Keosky: Oh, gosh, we dated. I think we started we met in February. We started dating in May, and then, so I was 21 then, and I'm thinking, we got engaged a few years later in and we had gotten married September 4th of 2010.
Emily Jones: Okay. Alright, so you knew him quite a while before you decided to marry him.
Sara Keosky: Oh, I was like, runaway bride.
Oh no! That was my own nerves. Had nothing to do with him, that was just me. Marrying. I mean, he was one who always joked around and he'd always tell me I'll never get married. We can live together. We'll have children, but I'll never get married. And I always told him I will get married one day. Like, there's no way I will not get married.
So if you don't want to do this, we'll just, you know, we can quit this now because[00:09:00] I mean, children, marriage, it's things I wanted in life. And I knew when his grandfather, became ill, he actually had proposed to me the day his grandfather passed away and he didn't know Yet that his grandfather passed away and, uh, he was at the hospital every day with him.
But, his grandfather had always told his grandma, if he marries anybody, it's going to be Sara and he found that out basically the same day that he had proposed to me that his grandfather had said that. So, I don't know. Little things. Happened for a reason. Yeah.
Emily Jones: Yeah. Sometimes those are nice, bittersweet memories that we get to carry forward.
So yeah, for sure. So you got married in
Sara Keosky: 2010. Yes.
Emily Jones: You finally stopped being the runaway bride. He finally agreed he would commit and you guys got married and what was your relationship like, or what were some of your favorite things about your relationship?
Sara Keosky: Oh, we're totally, I don't know. I go, we're totally. [00:10:00] Opposite spectrums, I'm very outgoing, you know, just the center of the room type of person where he was more reserved at home, just home body. Um, but there were things we absolutely love to do together. We worked very well together and. He liked things that we found in common, like he loved doing any of the renaissance fairs.
Like, he would be 100 percent down for the balloon lifts that they have going on. He wanted to go and do. We loved camping. We love taking our nephews camping, anything that we could do together in those areas. We did and, um, there's definitely the passion for animals. We both had together. For sure. We fostered many dogs and, we had, gosh, we had a dozen goats.
We had over 60 fowl. We had five dogs. We had three chickens. It was wow. It was just three chickens, three cats. So it was like the love for [00:11:00] animals too, but we, you know, bonded over there's. I mean, there's a lot more than that, but we did have a lot of common areas as opposite as we are too, but we balanced each other very well.
Emily Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I think in a lot of ways it's true that opposites do attract and that helps, you know, I was always a very rigid planner type of person and Nathan was like total opposite. So
Sara Keosky: yeah, it was the same way.
Emily Jones: That can kind of cause some friction, but also if you allow it, it helps you change. So, you know, now I'm not so rigid and yeah, so that's always an interesting dynamic.
So tell us or share with the audience, then you got married in 2010, you're running an animal rescue, basically fostering all these animals. Which I'm sure at times was stressful in its own way. Like it's a lot of responsibility and there's animals coming in and out and you know, there's probably just a [00:12:00] lot of activity of things that happens with that and probably get animals that have physical.
Not handicaps, but, you know, challenges they're dealing with or behavioral things that you're trying to work with them on. So, how long were you married before you ended up losing him?
Sara Keosky: We were married basically just over 9 years. He had passed away October 15th of 2019. Okay. But, um, I will say before we even got married, he was diagnosed with a condition called gastroparesis.
And I know many aren't too familiar with it. It was extremely rare when he was diagnosed with it, but it's basically a paralyzation of the stomach. So, ultimately, the stomach just slows down and slows down because the main nerve that goes up to the stomach doesn't allow the stomach to turn and process the food to go back down and be digest properly.
So it's almost like[00:13:00] the only way I know how to describe it is. Watching somebody who has 24 hour 7 day a week morning sickness,, which eventually, I mean, deadly result in his
passing.
Emily Jones: So, was it, a situation where you had to go to the doctor frequently, or he tried to. Go through some surgeries. I'm not sure how they typically try to treat that or try to help prolong, you know, the functionality of the stomach when that happens.
Um, what, what was your life like in those kind of situations?
Sara Keosky: Um, at first it was trying to figure it out and trying to figure out what it was because he was constantly going to the bathroom. He was throwing up. And he couldn't take in a lot of food and that was 1 thing he loved to do is eat.
So it was like, he couldn't eat any longer and a little bit that he did, it would just come back up. So it was just going through a bunch of [00:14:00] testing to figure out what was going on with him. And once they figured out way back then. That they had diagnosed him with a gastroparesis, which was doing upper scopes.
They had done basically a test where they have you eat like an egg and they let you wait for so long and then they basically x ray it through and see how far it digests and everything. That's basically how he had gotten diagnosed. They turned around and they had put him on a certain medication.
That I wasn't too pleased with because I know how it can affect people, but he was on this medication that's used for a very short term period of time for many years, and it ended up affecting it like his nerve endings and things like that in his body. But I had researched more through looking for somebody somewhere that knew more about this, and we did end up in Cleveland [00:15:00] clinic.
And had an awesome team of doctors worked very well with us and he ended up getting placed what they call a gastric stimulator into his stomach and
that worked pretty well for a couple years and then it had stopped working as well. And he started going right back into how he was. And at that time, he probably went from 270 to about 200. And
it just, it wasn't working. So they were looking for alternatives. So they decided to do what's called a pop procedure. And they had gone in and they opened up basically the flap that goes from the stomach down in. And when they had done that, I'm not quite sure what all went wrong there, to be honest. But,
Either way, he was at home. And at this point. His stomach was completely overly extended and it had only been a couple of days out from that surgery. And I had him [00:16:00] taken over to a local hospital where. At that point, he had kind of been in and out. He had just had surgery. He was gosh, I'm kind of skipping areas because he was very thin at that point.
Went down to the local hospital. More or less, I know they thought he was after payment and his arms were, he was very hard to get blood out of. So. Um, I know that I hate to say it, but judging and I just told the doctor, I'm like, his stomach is extremely overextended. You know, we can go ahead and take a shirt off and count each rib that's on his body right now.
You can see it. There's something wrong. push come to shove it. They ended up taking him up to Cleveland clinic. Rushed him into emergency surgery,, had taken over 4 liters of liquid out of his stomach and then remove the entire stomach. He was then I'm going put on life support. He did allow me to know [00:17:00] before anything happened that he wanted to fight it that he didn't, you know, whatever they had to do.
Let him do it. Um, he didn't want to be taken off. If he had to be on life support, he wanted on life support, which made it much easier on me. I was thankfully, I already knew his wishes, but he had been on life support for a period of time. They were able to take them off at that point. At that point, he was clear down to 136 pounds, but he was able to go into select and,, then over to a re rehabilitation.
And be able to regain how to walk again and, um, he's getting a little bit stronger, a little bit stronger,,
Emily Jones: really an emotional rollercoaster. I'm sure, you know, over
those past few years. Okay,
Sara Keosky: when you have, you know, them 3 am phone calls go, we got to go back into surgery. If we have to remove part of the esophagus, can we use this other part of the body to put here?
I never thought at the age of 36. I've been making or I should say 35, like. You [00:18:00] know, life or death decisions for my husband. So,
Emily Jones: and it, it kind of sounds like there for a while, you felt like you were really having to advocate for him, like bringing forward, you know, something's wrong.
Sara Keosky: Absolutely, absolutely.
At least I'm, I'm also, I'm, I'm lucky enough to know some of that medical background. To know, you know, I guess, without looking at a doctor going, I've done this for 20, you know, X amount of years how to use certain vocabulary. So they know you're not ignorant to this to the subject. And, I mean, that that did help on my part.
Thank God, because I don't think they would have taken me a series. As they did, because I know, I mean, you have a lot down here. You're near Youngstown. You have a lot of drug addiction. You have a lot of, you know, so when you're watching a patient come through that looks like they have track marks off her arms.
It's like, no, we were just trying to get blood out of him out of his arms. And it wouldn't come out because his veins have been used so much from being in the hospital previous.
Emily Jones: [00:19:00] So did you feel a lot of pressure or sometimes people say they have like a, almost a guilt association of, well, maybe I should have done this, or, you know, maybe I shouldn't have agreed to that. Did you have to wrestle with any of that as part of your healing journey?
Sara Keosky: Honestly, no, I really didn't. I know, and I always knew that I fought with everything in me.
To get done what he needed done for him. I mean, in between researching and calling, just anything and everything that I possibly could. If there was any type of doctor or anything new that I had heard. And like I said back then, the, the knowledge of gastroparesis was so little that it, it was hard to find things, but also that team of doctors.
We're just excellent. Absolutely. Excellent. They, they knew it. There is no cure for it. They knew the steps [00:20:00] with it. You know, everybody's different. Everybody's different with gastroparesis. They don't know what causes it. They don't know, you know, and underlying to it. So there's no right answer for everybody.
It's everybody's individual body.
Emily Jones: Okay, well, that's a great that you had such peace and confidence. Knowing that you did everything that you could, I think that's wonderful, even though you probably felt like you really had to push for certain things or ask more detailed questions. And maybe the average person would know to ask or be curious about, um, did you feel at times, especially towards the end,
I know a lot of times that widows when they're the caretaker or they're the person like supporting their spouse through that they feel burnt out or overlooked or because so much focus is on their spouse, sometimes that's also a difficult part of the journey for them. Did you have. Did you struggle with any of
that?
Sara Keosky: I feel so blessed in a sense because I almost want to go. No, I guess I never[00:21:00] I had such a routine and day in and day out was the same. And, I mean, of course, there were different little things that came up along the way, but you just, you keep going. And I guess in my head, it was always, this is what you do.
This is what you're meant to do. You know, when, when I married him, this is what I signed up for. You know, this is. This is my role. This is what I'm going to do. I had many people tell me I needed to slow down, but I need to stop. I needed to breathe and I just I wouldn't and I didn't think it was. I guess you can say fair to him, because this was 3 different occasions in ICU for drawn out periods of time.
Um, I looked at it as he was going through so much more than I was and if he could do this, I can, I can at least be there and do this to support him. But I also, at the same time. Watched my aunt go through a lot of similarities with my uncle and I seen how she [00:22:00] did it and she never Stopped so I drew I almost want to say I drew a lot of strength from seeing what my aunt went through With my uncle to be able to go through what I went through with him
Emily Jones: so seeing her maybe kind of inspired you to know that If she can do it, you can do it, and it is possible.
What, what advice would you give to somebody who's going through that right now? You know, they're going through the ups and downs, and they're in the hospital, and they don't really know how much longer they may have, um, and they're just feeling burnt out. You know, what words of advice would you give to somebody in that situation?
Sara Keosky: I must want to say just keep going. No matter what that going is for you, you know, that means you do have to step back and breathe for a minute, step back and breathe. Um, if you feel like you can keep going, keep going. It's so hard because everybody handles it so differently. So, [00:23:00] you know, it comes down to once more, not 1 way is right for another, you know, is it necessarily right for the next person, but just trust within yourself what you're doing and don't ever 2nd, guess it.
Emily Jones: That's great. So, um, once your spouse passed, so it's coming up almost 4 years now in October, 4 years. Um, what did, do you feel like you had good support around you from family and friends? Uh, were you surprised by some of the people that helped support you or maybe didn't support you? Uh, what was that experience like for you?
Sara Keosky: I had a decent support system. Um, my best friend was. Absolutely awesome. I have been best friends with her since 1st grade. It's like that person that you've never had a fight with. You've never had an argument with. We just, we click and she's also, she is an RN and, uh, she could understand a lot of it from her aspect because she has seen people, you, you mourn these, you know, you mourn that [00:24:00] person before they pass and you do it without even realizing it.
So she understood a lot of it and she was just. Unbelievably great support. Um, I did have my parents, which helped tremendously and then, I mean, as far as his side of the family, that just went to put it bluntly. I got a lot of I told him. Yeah, it was. It was something else, but basically I had, I don't know if you want to say I cut them off or they cut me off.
So, I mean, you can,
Emily Jones: they, they took their pain and basically tried to assign blame to
Sara Keosky: absolutely to blame somebody else than blame what's going on. And I go, ultimately, there's no blame when it comes down to it. He died from blood clots in the back of his leg, so there is no assigning volume. It was.
Emily Jones: Yeah.
So, um, I'm curious because you, you know, really [00:25:00] said that your best friend did so much to help you. And I get asked a lot, you know, what can we, what can I do to help someone who's a widow or who's grieving, you know, people, widows also say they have a really hard time accepting help or wanting people to help.
So what were some of the things that your friend did for you that just really made you feel supported and like she was there for you?
Sara Keosky: She. Should listen to anything. Um, it didn't matter. It didn't matter. What time time a day time a night. She had listened to any of it, she would be there no, no matter what, whether that be physically or on the phone, or like, I said, no matter what, what it was, she was there and she just.
She was there, and that was probably the biggest comfort of it. And I, I knew it didn't matter what it was. If I picked up that phone, she was there. It was going from feeling. Completely [00:26:00] abandoned to knowing I still have 1 person in my life that I know won't abandon me. And the only way that will happen is if she was to go to,
Emily Jones: oh, it sounds like you guys had a really beautiful friendship. I love that so much.
Sara Keosky: Oh, I, I'm beyond blessed with who I have. I really am
Emily Jones: people like that that just consistently show up and are there for us are just golden. I think in my mind.
Sara Keosky: Oh, I agree. Too many people are. I look at so many people that do, everybody disappears, everybody, you know, and I'm going, I, I can't believe how I almost take this. Tragedy and go, I'm so blessed.
Like, I, I really am just to see, I guess, to see my own support system to see, you know, the people in my life. To have, yes, I had people that I hadn't talked to reach out. Of course, I mean,[00:27:00] but. I just, I don't know any other way to put it really blessed. I just don't.
Emily Jones: Yeah, no, I, um, and for somebody who has gone through your situation to be able to say, I was blessed as I went through that.
I mean, that's that's incredible. Um, you know, because a lot of people would look at your situation as a whole and say. This is not a blessing, nothing about this is good, but the fact that you're able to take a situation that's bad and things that happen that were bad and hard and say of that, these were things that I was blessed with and find anything positive in that, I think is, um, really amazing.
Sara Keosky: Well, that's absolutely, this whole thing has been turning anything that's been a negative into a positive. And if I, I almost feel like if I don't do that, then I can, I don't want to go backwards. You know, I want to continue to move forward. I know he'd want me to [00:28:00] continue to move forward. He has.
Physically told me, he did shortly before he passed away. He was sitting in the chair and he looked at me and he's like, Sara, he goes, you're still young. He goes, go get married again, go have children because we were never able to carry a full term. Um, so he's like, go, you know, he's you're still young and I'll go get married and go, go have children this and that.
And I had. I just looked at him and I kind of went, are you kidding me? That's the last thing I'm thinking about, but he did verbalize to me more than 1, you know, more than 1 occasion to do that. And there's just, he's like, I want you to he did tell me I want you to be happy. I want you to keep going.
And I just that is something that has replayed in my head multiple times, especially being that. Yeah. I did move forward after his passing, so
I don't know.
Emily Jones: Yeah. And so I love that. You said moving forward because a [00:29:00] lot of people get tripped up and saying, well, I can't move on. I can't leave my person behind, but you can move forward. Yeah. And bring them with you. So how would you describe that? Concept or kind of how you've thought about that to somebody who's still just trying to, like, in that moment, like, I don't want to move forward.
I don't want to, you know, leave my person behind. How have you thought about that?
Sara Keosky: I guess I don't look at it as leaving him behind. I feel like he's in my life now. I strongly believe he's placed that person there., I believe he knows who I'm with. I personally feel like he's with me every day.
There's just, like, that feeling or that sense, like, I kind of sound funny. It might not, but I'm just, you know, standing there and he would just place his arm onto my right upper arm because he was so much taller than me. Those feelings. Like, I feel those. Almost every day, like, and it's just [00:30:00] weird. I feel that present.
I feel like he's here. I don't think the man will ever leave me. I just don't and I feel like a lot of things. Maybe it's just wishful thinking. I don't know, but I feel like moving forward. Hey, he got, I want to say guides it, .
Emily Jones: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that you said it well, that you're kind of carrying his spirit and his essence with you forward. And however you want to acknowledge that he's there with you, whether it's, you know, feeling that he touched you or that he's influencing your journey or, you know, how, however that looks for you, that.
You're viewing it as you're kind of on this new adventure, this new part of life. And it's not that you love him any less or you've forgotten about him, but he's still with you. Yeah.
Sara Keosky: Well, that's it. I don't, I don't feel like I'm replacing him. I don't feel you, you will never replace that person. And [00:31:00] it's like every relationship is individual.
Every relationship, you know, is not the same. So I guess it's just. I think when I talk to other people that are widowed, widowed widowers, it's almost getting over that guilt feeling. And if they can get over that guilt, they can seem to try to move on.
Emily Jones: Yeah. There's a lot of guilt and grief. I think I listed did a live event not that long ago.
And I want to say I listed like six or eight different ways that people really struggle with guilt and grief. And, uh, it's just such a common. and I'm glad that you're not caught up in that and I really try to work with people to get over that hump and to be able to move forward because if not, that's a heavy burden to carry and yeah, and I think of guilt is really like guilt implies malicious intent and that's something we [00:32:00] learned through grief recovery method and, um, 99 percent of us had no malicious intent toward our spouse.
So yeah. So instead, you know, I just encourage people to think about what do you wish was better, more or different rather than saying, Oh, I just feel so guilty about how this went down or how our interactions were. It's usually just something that you wish was different or, or maybe better, but yeah. So, all right.
So what. Final, you know, tips or words of advice or encouragement, would you leave for other widows that hear your story? And, you know, if you were talking to someone who was in your shoes, and maybe they're feeling discouraged, what, what words would you leave that person with?
Sara Keosky: It would be to just keep moving forward, but.
You know, there becomes times that it's okay to trip or, you know, take a step back, [00:33:00] but just try with everything in you to keep moving forward in life.
Emily Jones: Awesome. Thank you, Sarah, so much for your time today and for just being open and sharing your story and helping to encourage and inspire other widows that are out there.
I really appreciate you coming on today. No, thank you.
Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, finding hope, or achieving your dreams for the future.
Do you need a safe space to connect with other like-minded widows? Do you wish you had how-tos for getting through the next steps in your journey, organizing your life or moving through grief? What about live calls where you get answers to your burning questions? The Brave Widow Membership Community is just what you need.
Inside you'll find courses to help guide you, a community [00:34:00] of other widows to connect with, live coaching and q and a calls, and small group coaching where you can work on what matters most to you. Learn how to heal your heart, find hope, reclaim joy, and dream again for the future. It is possible. Head on over to brave widow.com to learn more.
