Margherita
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Introduction and Weekly Update
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Hey, hey, and welcome to episode number 139 of the Brave Widow Show. You guys, this week we launched the Love After Loss Mastermind and I have been coaching my face off how we're doing those two hours every day this week. So that's 10 hours of coaching plus all of my one on one coaching call clients and
I just feel like I'm in the coaching zone. I am so locked in. It has been so amazing. I just feel like I'm on fire. I've just had a wonderful week of coaching and teaching and Helping people take the next step forward. I also had a lot of questions about people who are really on the fence about joining the Mastermind, about joining the membership community, about maybe doing one on one coaching, and It just creates some confusion and overwhelm and ultimately people don't take any action because they're not sure which direction is the right one to go.
Special Offer: Name Your Price
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So I want to do something a little bit different and a little fun. I'm going to just go with my intuition on this. This was not in my plan for 2025, but I just feel that urge. that calling to do something a little bit different between now and the end of March of 2025. So if you are listening or watching this during that amount of time, this is the perfect time for you to be hearing this.
For some people, There's a lack of clarity in which program is the right fit for them, which one's the best, which one is really going to help propel them forward. What's really in their budget? What can they afford or have access to? And so I am going to make this As simple as possible for you. So between now and the end of March, I am inviting you to name your price.
I would love to know from you where you are in your widow and grief journey. And if you don't know, that's totally fine. What are you willing to invest? To learn the skill sets that you're going to have the rest of your life, to learn the tools of navigating grief, to be able to start rebuilding a life that you can enjoy again.
And then, I will be extending an offer. Custom created just for you. Now, this goes against all typical business advice of having too many offers, of not sticking with things that are consistent. And so, I'm not abandoning my offers. I'm not changing anything. Like, all of that is going to remain the same.
If you are on the fence, if you're not sure which one is right for you, I want to help you out. And so knowing what your goals are, knowing what your preferences are, knowing what your budget is, I will then be able to help curate for you what I think will best help you in moving forward.
There are three ways. that we can figure out what the best offer is going to be for you. Number one is if you're on social media, just send me a DM and we'll take the conversation from there. Number two, you can go to my website, brave widow. com. There is a contact me form. Take that next step. We'll get you started.
Or number three, also on the Brave Widow website, you can actually schedule a consult. And during that consult, I will take the time to learn more about you, to understand better where you are in your journey, what I think is going to be the best solution for you, to understand what you're thinking from a budget perspective, and then be able to make you an offer that makes the most sense, that will help you move forward in the best way.
So if this is you, if you've been on the fence, if you've been unsure about which program, which option, which price, which way to best interact and work with me from now until the end of March, this is your time to name your price and I will provide you with the best possible offer within 30 days.
where you are, what you're looking for, and what you are willing to invest.
All right, let's dive into this week's episode.
[00:04:47] Emily: Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Meet Margherita: A Widow's Journey
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Let me introduce you to Margherita, Margherita is 39 years old. She lost her husband, Dan, on November 30th, 2023. They were together for 14 years and married for 10, and have two children together. They have a daughter who's eight and a son who's five. Dan was diagnosed with stage four non small cell lung cancer in March of 2023.
It was the most difficult eight months of their lives, but they were fortunate to have some beautiful moments together. This past year has pushed her beyond what she ever thought she was capable of. Through grief, she has also learned a lot about herself. She holds Dan so close to her heart through every milestone and knows that he is watching over his family just as he did on Earth.
All right, let's dive in.
[00:06:14] Emily: Margherita welcome to the show and thank you so much for being patient with me. And for being willing to share your story.
[00:06:22] Margherita: Thank you, Emily, for offering this. I think this is an amazing opportunity. And it really is helpful to other widows.
So thank you for doing this.
My name is Margherita
or as many call me Margherita I am 39. I will be 40 in less than a month.
And I lost my husband in 10 days will be a year. And I have two children. I have a daughter who is about to be nine in February and a son who will be six in March. And I work at a university as an academic advisor. I've been doing it for 15 years now. I work full time, have a great big Italian family.
My parents are immigrants from Sicily. And with that comes a great village. That is who I am.
[00:07:10] Emily: Awesome. I know it's a struggle to balance kids and their grief and our grief and work and all of the things that go with that. So I just want to commend you for being able to in this amount of time, come on this podcast and openly share your story to help encourage and inspire other widows.
[00:07:34] Margherita: Thank you. I really appreciate doing this. I find I was excited to do it and nervous because I felt like it could be really therapeutic. And, with that, I'll explain the reason why I find that to be helpful. So today's actually my grandfather's anniversary of his death, and he was the first person I ever lost.
And I remember thinking when I lost him at 15 years old that This is the worst thing that could ever happen to me. I was very close. He was like a dad to me and it just felt fitting that now here I am talking about losing my husband, which is definitely now the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
I'm looking forward to telling my story and maybe raising a little awareness about lung cancer and what my husband went through.
[00:08:24] Emily: Yeah, that's great. And. If you think about it at the age of 18, at the age of 15, that probably was the worst thing that had ever happened to you at that point.
Margherita's Love Story
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[00:08:34] Emily: So tell us a little bit like how you met your husband, what you liked about him, what that looked like.
[00:08:41] Margherita: So my husband and I went to the same high school. I moved from Queens to Long Island when I was a junior in high school. So I was only there two years. We had mutual friends, however. never spoke, not one word, never said one thing to each other. And then eight years later, Facebook recommended him as someone I might know back in the day used to say, on the right hand side, suggested people.
And I saw his picture and his name and I was like, Oh, Dan Lombardi. He's cute. So I happen to have been freshly single at that point. And I sent him a friend request and we started engaging on just our comments on each other's posts. And then one night I was having a game night and with my cousins and I said having a good time, blah, blah, blah.
And he was like, Oh, I wish I was there. So I took the initiative and I just said why don't you come? And he did and he came and we hung out until three o'clock in the morning. And just from then on, I just knew we just never skipped a day from there. We talked every day and soon after we started dating officially, actually our first date or first hangout just passed a few weeks ago.
And then our dating anniversary is December 2nd. And then. From there, just everything just went pretty quickly. We were engaged within a year and a half. He surprised me in Bryant park. I was at work and he was so romantic about it and he sent me flowers every hour. And then the last set of flowers said, I can't wait to see you.
And I was so confused and I was texting him and I was like, what are you doing? What do you mean? You can't wait to see me. We were going to Mexico the next day and I thought it was related to that. And then my coworker who was in on it, who was very pregnant at the time, said, Oh, I want hot chocolate across the street from Bryant Park.
Come with me. And I was like, it's July. Why do you want hot chocolate? And she's I'm pregnant. Just come with me. I said, okay, fine. So I started walking across Bryant Park with her and I'm on the phone texting him at the same time because he's not answering me. And I'm like what's, what are you doing?
Why are you sending me flowers? And then she turns around just like you're being so rude. Get off your phone. Talk to me. And she did that so that I would look up. So when I looked up I saw him from a distance standing there with a whole bouquet of flowers. And I just knew at that moment what was about to happen.
And it was the biggest surprise of my life. I've never been surprised like that again. And I will always remember that moment. And then from there in August of 2013, we got married and in February of 2016, we had our daughter and in March of 2019, we had our son. And then our family was complete and we knew we were good and we were done.
Dan's Diagnosis and Battle with Cancer
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[00:11:27] Margherita: And then in March of 2023 after months of, complaining of back pain and telling me, I just, my spine feels like I'm an old man. I just don't understand why does my back hurt so much? And he had gone to urgent care and they told him it was muscular. He no x rays. He went to his primary doctor who said, yeah, it's probably muscular, but if you're concerned, I'll send it to an orthopedic went to the orthopedic.
No x rays said it was muscular, just like touching his back. Then by March, late March he was in so much pain and then it started to affect his chest and he had a lung collapse before nine years prior for no, nothing related to cancer. It was just a spontaneous pneumothorax, which apparently happens to young, tall, thin, Men.
And so he said, I feel like it's that feeling again, like my lung collapse. And I said, okay you're going to the ER now. So that night I put the kids to bed. He was like, I'm going to wait till they go to sleep so they don't get nervous. And then he went to the ER by himself thinking this is just a lung collapse.
They're going to do what they did last time. They're going to, put the chest tube in blah, blah, blah. He's come in the morning after they go to school. Okay. And then I was waiting for him to text me or call me and it was like two or three in the morning and He said they saw a spot on my x ray.
And I said, what do you mean they saw a spot? And he's they think it's cancer. Totally didn't, neither of us expected that. And now he's by himself in the ER. They literally had him in the waiting room, not the waiting room, in the hallway of the ER on a stretcher by himself. So I called my mom. I kept calling her until she answered.
And then she finally did. And then around five or six in the morning, she was there. I left and went to the ER. And from there, between that day and a week Later, we had a diagnosis of stage four non small cell lung cancer and it was in his obviously his lungs. It was in his spine. It was in his hips.
It was in his pelvic bone. There was a spot in his kidney. He was just Riddled with masses and it explains. Yeah.
[00:13:46] Emily: Yeah. What was going through your mind in that, this crushing reality of stage four, it's in multiple organs, multiple places in his body. And you're just like, this just came out of nowhere.
Yeah, that's
[00:14:02] Margherita: it felt I've felt like the wind got knocked out of me. I don't know how else to explain it when he said it the first time on the phone, it felt that way when the doctors told us it was stage four, it felt like that again. And everything after that just was another gut punch after gut punch because it was just.
The irony in it, because first of all, my husband never touched a cigarette in his life. And he was so angry that of all cancers, he had lung cancer because he knew the stigma around it. And he was such an anti smoker. He, I and it was like one of those things that we've thought about because I used to smoke and he begged me to quit.
And on our wedding night, the night before I, it was like a vow I made to him that I was not going to smoke anymore. And I didn't. And Just for him to get it. And so, there was that aspect, the irony of that, the fact that we had just lost his mom to cancer three years prior, and that was already so difficult for him.
And he was like, Are you kidding? I just lost my mom. And now I have cancer. And obviously, we didn't know what that meant at first, stage four sounds very scary. But We still had hope at that point because there's, okay you're young, you're healthy. You're going to fight this, right?
Like you're, you've never smoked. Your lungs should be healthy otherwise. So we're going to be okay. And then from there. It went, from one oncologist to the other, I think we went to four different oncologists, best doctors I could find. Luckily we had people who worked in the medical field who guided us who to go to.
And it was just bad news after bad news after bad news. And then we finally landed on. Sloan Kettering and his doctor was amazing. All the other doctors wanted to be very aggressive straight from the beginning. They wanted to do, there was a pill at the time called Tigrisil, which is for he had what's called an EGFR mutation, which this is something that who knows about these things.
It is, he essentially won the genetic lottery. It's not hereditary. It was just a mutation that he had that Led to this cancer and there was nothing he could have done. It was nothing. He ate, drank, smoked, nothing. It was just this, like they said, genetic lottery. So they had a pill at the time.
It was a chemo pill. It was a medicine that had an 80 percent success rate of giving people with that stage of cancer and that type of cancer up to five years. And so the initial doctors wanted to be very aggressive and give him the Tegrasso radiation and chemo all at once to hopefully give him the best chance.
But I, that terrified me. I know what chemo does. I know what radiation does. And I was just like, why are we doing all this at once? And the doctor at Kessel and Kettering would have a totally different approach and he wanted to start with Tegrasso, see how that goes. If that doesn't work, let's go to chemo.
If that doesn't work, let's throw in radiation. He's we don't want to use all our tools at once. We want to give him as much time as possible because at that point it's like a one to two year survival rate. And at the time, our daughter was seven, our son was four. So it was just, we wanted as much time as possible.
And he was such a fighter. I. Just was blown away by his strength and him never giving up and him always having that, I'm going to kick, I'm going to be that person who lives 20 years with this cancer and I'm going to be that person, and he was great. He was absolutely great. And after a few months on the Tgresso, we learned that he wasn't responding.
He was of the 20 percent that did not respond to the Tgresso. So then at that point we had to throw in, this was the summer of 2023, we had to throw in chemo. So he started chemo and he had I believe five sessions, which were every three weeks. And then there was a mass on his spine that wasn't compressing his spinal cord, but it was.
about to like it was getting to that point. So the pain in his back and at this point throughout these months, the pain just got worse and worse. He was pretty much sitting down or laying down most of the time. He still did things, which was great. I'm so glad he had that time. He was a great guy.
Went to concerts and he went to his comic book stores and he went to sporting events and he hung out with his friends at the arcade and he did all the things that he loved to do. But he would get tired and obviously he would be in a lot of pain. But by the summer with the chemo, it started to, weaken him a little bit more.
And the spine, the mass on his spine was getting a little concerning. So they started radiation. So now at this point he had the Tegresso, the chemo and the radiation. Bye.
Facing the Final Days
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[00:18:53] Margherita: October of 2023. He really just wasn't feeling well. And he told me like something feels wrong. I don't know what it is. It feels different than it's been feeling.
I said, okay, you have a doctor's appointment today anyway. And again we had such a positive outlook on everything that at that day for his appointment, his friend was supposed to take him. I took him to everything, but that day I had an event for work and his friend was like, don't worry, I'll take him.
Don't worry. And so his friend took him and I said, just call me, let me know. And then his friend called me and said, they said that his lung collapsed. So he has to go to the hospital. Okay. I'm like, I'll be right there. So I go to the hospital, his, we think it's just a simple chest tube. Reinflate the lung, all that.
It wasn't reinflating. So after about four or five days, it wouldn't stick, it would keep deflating after they would shut off the tube. And then the surgeon met with us and said, we should consider surgery at this point so that we can, they essentially go into irritate the wall to help the lung stick to it.
When they went in, everyone's do you want me to come while he goes to the surgery? I'm like, again, positive mindset, right? Like he'll be fine. So I stood by myself at the hospital. My kids were at school, everybody was busy. So I sit by myself and then about three hours into the surgery surgeon calls me.
She's listen, when I cut him open. There was so much infection inside of him, and I tried to find the source of where this infection was coming from, because clearly that was what was leading to his lung to collapse. And she thought it was the lung, but after further, she saw that he had a rather large hole in his esophagus.
So essentially what was happening was whatever he was eating and drinking was seeping into his chest cavity. Taking away the space for his lung. And that's what was making his lung collapse. She said, this is fatal. This is not something that someone with his condition, with the treatment he's been under you know, I'm sorry.
She's what do you want me to do? I can go in and I can try to close it as best as I can.
Post-Surgery Scare
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[00:21:09] Margherita: And, we'll see how he does and all that, or, what, and I said, yeah, please close it, do what you can. And again, I'm by myself. At that point, I call my family, everybody starts coming.
By the time he got out of surgery when they were bringing him to his room, the window was open and I could see from the waiting room directly into his room and his body just went rigid and he was, the alarms were going off and I thought we were going to lose him right then and there. And I was freaking out, but luckily I was with my family.
Somehow, some way. They got him to, he had a reaction to the anesthesia. So with all the medication he was taking, the painkillers, the fentanyl, everything, he just had a bad reaction to the anesthesia. So that was another scare. Like we thought he was going to die in surgery. Then we thought he was going to die after surgery.
Breathing Tube and Goodbyes
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[00:21:58] Margherita: And then he was on a breathing tube because he was struggling to breathe on his own. So that night, Pretty much all were saying our goodbyes. We didn't think he was going to make it through the night. And he did. He came, he woke up the next morning on a breathing tube, started texting to talk to me.
He was able to communicate via text and, We did that for a while. He was on the, he was on the breathing tube for a little while because his lungs just weren't getting strong enough for him to breathe on his own. But then eventually he got all, he was everything. They did not think he was even going to make it a few days and he did.
And he got off the ventilator and he was on oxygen and he couldn't eat this whole time. Obviously he has, the hole in his esophagus that was patched up.
Home Hospice Care
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[00:22:46] Margherita: And then They said, if the esophagus stays closed, do you want him to go into hospice, from home or do you want to, keep him in the hospital hospice?
And because at this point there was no more chemo, there was no more radiation, there was no more nothing, there was nothing they could do. His body was way too weak, too damaged. They knew he was going to eventually reopen and that would be what would kill him. We talked it over and he decided he wanted to go home.
So finally he was able to get off the ventilator and they did a surgery to put a G tube and a J tube in him. So he came home with a chest tube, oxygen, a G tube, a J tube, and I had to learn how to clean all these things and take care of all these things. And. Hospice care is only two hours a day that they come, the nurse.
So I became his full time caretaker at that point with cleaning him and changing him and all those things that I just never thought I would have to do at this age at 38 years old at the time.
[00:23:52] Emily: I can't even imagine how Heavy and hard. That must have been especially as you're thinking also about your kids and all the other to do's that have to be done in this shock of like, how is this even possible that we're here in this moment?
[00:24:08] Margherita: What? How did you survive and get through some of those days?
Family and Faith Support
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[00:24:13] Margherita: My family and my faith were the two things that kept me going. My family are just the type of people that would lay down for you and just, give you everything that you need. And I'm just very lucky to have the people.
His best friends that he grew up with were angels. So with everyone's help with my children, being that relief was given to me because I had so many people taking care of my kids for me. And then my job was amazing. Obviously they, I, I took time off of work and they were so understanding and loving and my community came together for us and they started food trains and all these beautiful things.
I, they kept my spirits up. So with them, I was staying afloat. His positive attitude was also another thing that kept me going because I knew that if I gave up, then he would give up. And I knew we didn't have much time at that point, but I still wanted whatever time that we had. As silly as it might sound to be hopeful and to be, full of faith.
So that's what was getting us both through it. And he was still very heavily medicated. So it was like Groundhog's Day every day. I had to remind him of what was happening. And. He would ask, am I going to die? And it was just every day having to have this conversation because he was so loopy from all the medication.
He hadn't eaten in weeks at this point. He was on, a feeding tube and he was just skin and bones and it was just awful. Our priest from our church kept coming to the hospital, to my house, praying with us, praying for him.
Hospice Nurse and Final Days
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[00:25:53] Margherita: And then we got this hospice nurse who, I don't even know, I just, she was a godsend.
Her name, my husband's name is Dan, her name was Danielle, and she came that first day, and she was helping clean up his chest tube area and all that. And she's just started singing Ave Maria. In the most beautiful, angelic voice that I've ever heard. And we're just sitting there, me and my mom and whoever was with me that day, just, it just felt like an angel came into our house.
And that was what she was for the whole time that she was there with us. And it was just the people, I can't say more than anything. It was when you're surrounded by such beautiful people. It just, Keeps you going. And don't get me wrong. There were days. I was obviously in the shower when I had a minute to take a shower because somebody was with him.
I let it out. I just really tried not to in front of him. I wanted him to stay hopeful and I wanted him to feel very light in it.
Heartbreaking Conversations
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[00:26:49] Margherita: And then as we got closer, when his esophagus did open up again, and we knew that with the going septic, it was just going to be a matter of time. That was when things got a little bit more Dark and he obviously at that point accepted that he was going to die and he was not no longer, saying I'm going to fight this.
I got this. I'm going to do it. He was like, I'm ready. And he would say I can't do this anymore. It's too much pain. And, he was in so much pain at that point. And that was the hardest part because the whole time what kept me going was that positive aspect and him staying positive.
So when the conversations got darker, it was really hard and I just kept God in our conversations because he was very religious. And I just kept telling him like, you're going to be with your mom again. And all the people you love that passed away. And he was like, I know, he was very faithful.
I'll be with God.
A Beautiful Farewell
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[00:27:53] Margherita: And the final days we had such beautiful conversations. And this is something that I look back now and after all the widows that I've met and have spoken to, I feel so grateful for those conversations as heartbreaking as they were as hard as it was to say those things to each other.
We left nothing unsaid. We apologized to each other. We said all the things that we should have done, could have done, treated each other differently, done better, because obviously, no marriage is perfect and ours wasn't. And he apologized to me and he just, it just, he, it was just something that I never thought, would happen.
I would get and it was beautiful. I never got to say goodbye to anyone who died and all the people that I lost in my life, grandparents, my young cousin, his mom. We never had that. I never had that conversation with anyone who was dying. So I just felt so grateful to be able to have that. He wrote a letter to our kids.
He wrote a letter to me. He got to say goodbye to all his friends and his family. Family and my family, and it was heartbreakingly beautiful. I don't know how else to explain it than that. Everyone was so grateful for that time with him. And the night he, the morning he passed I was sleeping next to him on the couch.
He had the hospice bed and my son came down and he, came and sat with me and I heard my husband was struggling. I knew it was about to happen or soon. So I said, Luke, let's go upstairs and let's go get ready for school. I was trying to rush them out with my mom. So I went upstairs. I quickly brushed his teeth cause he didn't want, he didn't want my mom to do anything like a typical four year old.
He just wanted mommy at that point. So I quickly brushed his teeth, quickly did his hair, got him dressed. I was like, okay, mom, go. My mom went downstairs to say goodbye to him before she left because the routine was she would take them to school and then she would go to work. And she called me and she just looked at me from, I was at the top of the stairs and she was at the bottom and I just knew.
And she's but I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And I said, okay, I was like, go take the kids to school. I literally didn't have time to process. I would get the kids out. So my mom quickly took them to school and I went downstairs and he was gone. I made my kids say goodbye to him before they left, but they didn't know that he was gone.
So they just. Kiss him goodbye. They knew they thought he was sleeping and they went to school. I just didn't want them there when the, the funeral home would come and all that stuff. So they went to school and when my mom left, I was by myself with him and I had my time. Scream, yell, do all the things that you do.
And yeah, and so he passed away the 10, 15 minutes that I went upstairs to get my son ready to school. And I said, you waited till I left. They knew you were going to do that because I did not leave his side. I stood next to him those final days. I did not leave his side. I slept on the couch every single night.
The whole time he was in hospice. I just knew he was going to do that. And I knew it was too hard for him to let go with me there. So I understood, I wasn't upset. I just was talking to him for really, like 15 minutes I was gone. And that was it. And the priest from our church was so kind.
He knew that because my husband was a teacher, because he was young, because he had so many friends and all that, he was like, there's no way that funeral home is going to be able to hold all the people that you're going to have come to this wake. He's have the wake at the church. Let's try to make it work.
So he got to have his wake in this beautiful, big Catholic church. And it just felt like a rock star funeral, which my husband was a big rock and roll fan. Big. And he picked his playlist that he wanted playing at his funeral and we played all his favorite songs. And it was for something so awful.
It was the most beautiful, awful thing. So everything just went. As much like everything he deserved in that setting, he got it was nonstop people coming in students that graduated over 10 years ago were coming to pay their respects. It was beautiful. It was just, it just showed who he was and the impact that he had on so many people, and my kids were obviously heartbroken but my daughter could not stay.
Thank you upstairs. She stood downstairs in the church and my son sat on my lap for the majority of the week and he would randomly go up to the casket and kiss his daddy and then come back and it was beautiful and it was again heartbreaking but it was Everyone said it like, I've never been to a wake like that in my life.
And I said, I know it's so fitting that was his wake because he was so unique. And he planned the songs. He planned the readings he planned. He bought the plot. He picked his headstone. He did everything. He planned every aspect of it and that's just who he was. And yeah, there was an element that it was because he wanted to make it easier for me, but it was also.
That was who he is. And he wanted to even have control over like his funeral and his wake, and he wanted it done a certain way. And you better believe that guns and roses was playing in a Catholic church.
[00:33:24] Emily: That is so amazing. And what what a beautiful gift to have during just a really hard, heavy raw time that you would be able to have those conversations, have those memories, create the experience at his wake of exactly what he wanted and to find peace because so many widows Even when they know there's a terminal diagnosis, they either out of hope or out of denial don't have the conversation, or maybe their person doesn't want to and refuses to.
And I think it's a beautiful gift that he gave to you to just pour into you and to be open and to feel that he could leave on good terms. That's just amazing.
[00:34:10] Margherita: Yeah, it was. And that's who he was. And we even talked about signs. Because again, these are things you don't typically get to discuss.
And I said how will I know it's you? And I was like, He's I don't know. What do you mean? And I and I was like, I don't know, like a butterfly, like a cardinal, like what he's like, why did it have to be a bird or an insect? And he's you're just going to know it's me. It's going to be so obvious.
And you're just going to know it's me. And that is exactly what has happened since he's passed away. Any sign that I've gone, it's just been a blatant. Yep. There's no other explanation except for that's him. I'm so grateful for that conversation because otherwise I would have been looking at the birds and the butterflies and not paying attention to these most obvious signs that he was sending me.
And I'm so grateful again to have had those conversations and even the kids know they're like, Oh, that must be daddy pulling his strings. That's how I, I. I was teasing when the Yankees made it to the World Series because now the whole time we were together, my husband was the Yankee number one fan the whole time we were together, the 15 years we were together, they never made it to the World Series.
And I said, when the season started, I said, if there's one thing he's going to do while he's out there is he's going to get the Yankees to the World Series. And so when they got to the World Series, I made a joke to my kid that said, daddy's up there like this with the players, making sure that.
He's treating them like puppets and he's making sure that they're going to win. And so now, whenever something happens that they think is daddy to go, daddy must be playing the strings.
[00:35:36] Emily: I love it because it just keeps him in your conversations and in your memories and things that, that you all do together.
Coping with Loss
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[00:35:44] Emily: So here you are just about a year out from that and a year out from the holidays and things that we have coming up. What in this past year has really been the most helpful for you with healing your heart,
[00:36:00] Margherita: my kids are my number one motivation for everything.
First of all, I just feel like they got deprived of something that they should have never been deprived of, which was the best dad that anyone could have asked for. And so it motivates me to just be both things to them as much as I can. And. My family, my friends, his friends that are my friends, obviously I always say like I inherited his friend and therapy.
I, I, any widow that I've met that hasn't gone through a bereavement group of some sort or some sort of widow setting or therapy one on one. I just, I advocate so hard for it. I don't know where I would have been without it. So many questions that you think is just in your mind or situations are like, it must just be me.
I must be crazy. It just must be me that feels this way. And then when you just realize that it's not just you and everyone feels this way. And these are all very common feelings. It just helped heal me a little bit. I'm still in, I'm not going to say I'm out of my fog. I'm functioning. I'll definitely say that.
I do what I have to do. But I definitely still feel like I am in survival mode. I, I also feel like I'm still just numb a little bit. There have been moments where I get hit like a truck and I cannot get out of bed and I scream and cry and do all those things, but I do get up when I'm done and I go on and do what I need to do for my kids that I just don't know what I would do without them because they are my reason for continuing to push on.
And I've never been a person who gives up very easily. I feel like I've always been someone who has more of a optimist. I can't speak anymore. This is the brain. I totally understand. Yeah. I've always been optimistic. And I think that helps me a lot just because that was my personality to begin with.
So I do fight the angel and devil on my shoulder. I want to be. The why me person, but then I truly believe why not me? I think of all the bad things that happen to people in this world and continue to happen. And I said why that person? Why that person? And why them? And why, it's, I'm no different than anyone else.
So having this, why me mentality is useless and I can't, the biggest thing that I tell myself every day is there's. So many aspects to this situation that I cannot control. It's just out of my hands from when he got sick. I cannot take away his cancer, but I can do that. I can make him comfortable. I can make him have fun.
I could help him build beautiful memories with his friends, with his kids, with everybody. And now the things that I can control as far as my grief are.
Finding Joy Again
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[00:38:47] Margherita: Going out with my friends once in a while and find the trying to find joy again and trying to, do things that I love. I love concerts, me and him.
We love different music, but we love music. And I went to four concerts this summer and just doing the things that I know spark something in me. And it doesn't take away your pain. It doesn't make it just magically disappear, but even if it's, three hours long during a concert and I could just sing out loud and dance and feel like I'm in a different world for a little bit.
It helps. It just replenishes me and I will say to take a girls trip in October, with two of my girlfriends and we went to Puerto Rico, and I ziplined. And I'm scared of heights and I ziplined and I got off of that. It was eight different zip lines and I got off of that and I felt like something just lifted off of me.
I don't know if just because I, your feelings get shifted onto something else, right? Cause you're so scared and you, and it's so exhilarating and it's so crazy that I, I felt like a little bit of it, the weight. was lifted off of me. I don't know how else to explain it, but I think that taught me that I have to keep doing things like that, things that challenge me, things that excite me, things that, just spark some sort of joy in me.
Because it just even if it's for a little while, like just lift it away for a little bit. And then that saying with the grief is that stone that you carry around in your pocket doesn't ever go away. It just feels lighter. I can see that now I understand it now it's still there still feels very heavy at the moment, but I know that with time, it will feel lighter.
And just being able to raise our kids and hopefully do a good job like he would have done with me. That's just all I want and that's all that matters to me. So that's what gets me through.
Conclusion and Resources
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[00:40:41] Emily: Thank you for sharing that. I think you're doing just a wonderful job of trying to process the pain and, take some of those steps forward while also still honoring and acknowledging the love that you had for your husband.
So that's so great. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and just being so open and vulnerable. I think it's really going to encourage and inspire other people who hear it as well.
[00:41:08] Margherita: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
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