Finding direction after loss
Amanda Garzia and the late Kevin Micallef
Amanda Garzia reflects on the devastating loss of her husband to cancer and the disorienting journey through grief, finding solace in faith, ordinary moments and her enduring passion for writing as a source of hope and a rudimentary sense of direction.
The September before last, life as I had known it for 28 years was flushed down the drain.
Or at least that’s what it felt like when, in the space of ten minutes tops, my 52-year-old husband was told that his cancer was inoperable, the only option available chemotherapy, and the time left measurable only in months.
On the night of 23rd April, 2025 he died at home, the day Malta celebrated the feast of St Gregory, a saint the Catholic Church honours worldwide on 3rd September. I discovered St Gregory’s prayer for the deliverance of souls in the chapel at SAMOC (Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre) Hospital’s chapel.
In spite of the fact that neither my husband nor I had ever mentioned the word “death”, our grief began in that first consultation room. Grieving life as we knew it. Shattered. Incredulous. Directed into a future (or lack of) every instinct made us recoil from, the words of Pope Benedict on dying, death, and eternal life comforted me: “Death is a road of hope for if God exists, and if this God has willed and continues to will man, then it is clear that his love is capable of doing what human love wants to do in vain: to keep the beloved alive beyond death.”
How does this lift the haze and uncloud women’s hearts and minds? I can’t tell anyone how to process loss. Although, from diagnosis to death, my Hospice counsellor anchored me in the here and now such that my family and I could somewhat enjoy ordinary pleasures like watching a football game. When my husband could no longer make our Sunday pizza from scratch, we placed an order instead.
“My Hospice counsellor anchored me in the here and now such that my family and I could somewhat enjoy ordinary pleasures like watching a football game. When my husband could no longer make our Sunday pizza from scratch, we placed an order instead.”
When he passed, I leafed through Darian Leader’s The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression. It made me realise that I was identifying, as the Freudians would say, with the deceased. I attempted to do what he did best: I cooked (though it was his passion, never mine) and even hosted Christmas lunch.
I tuned in to Seria A, Bundesliga, and Premiere League fixtures (never a passion of mine either, though I gladly kept him company on the couch). I watched Welcome Back, Kotter – a 70s sitcom he’d started watching a couple of months before he died – and remembered how dad used to love it when we lived in Canada.
I was exhausted all the time. I had no energy to concentrate, writing and reading the bare minimum. I'm grateful I was able to keep up with my commitments to AotFFC (Authors of Flash Fiction), a flash fiction group I co-administer.
I watched TV. It kept me company. Old TV shows I had missed so many episodes of, shows I had not had the chance to watch in English like Fame and A Different World. I watched docudramas like The Roman Empire and The Last Tzars. I was at a juncture. There was one certainty, however. My passion for writing. A passion which has always given me hope and a rudimentary sense of direction.
When I came across an observation by Mary Lou Judd Carpenter, via Echoes of Women on Facebook, it struck a chord: “What people don’t tell us is that in our 50s, we have a repeat of an adolescence… it is natural to have periods of awkwardness and uncertainty, as we try new behaviours and dream of new possibilities”.
I did not dream of new possibilities because images of my husband’s decline and demise often came to mind (and still do), sometimes overwhelmingly so.
Days before the first anniversary of this death, I wrote about grief, a bracelet, and Wonder Woman, my childhood superhero. A brief piece written with fiftywordstories.com in mind. Putting it all in words was a good place to start.