|
BY KATHI STEARNS
Staff Writer
ATLANTA--When Cheryl McGraine danced with Julian Fletcher at a fraternity
social in l966 they both discovered that they had more than the steps in
common. The beat of their lives was also similar. They both came from a family
of five, had a similar value system and were students.
They both loved to dance to the music of the late ‘60s and ‘70s,
but they also both enjoyed exploring the outdoors, watching football and
hanging out at Julian’s fraternity house at the Georgia Institute of
Technology. ...And the beat went on.
As the two twirled the night away at subsequent fraternity functions, they
began to fashion their own steps. They planned how they would spend their lives
together, what goals they would accomplish, how they would grow old together
and the wedding that would begin it all. Four years after those first steps on
the dance floor, they dedicated the steps of their lives to each other. They
were married Sept. 12, 1970, the same day Julian graduated from Tech. ...And
the beat went on.
By the time they celebrated 25 years of marriage in 1995 at Immaculate Heart
of Mary Church, Atlanta, their dance included a few job transitions for Julian,
the death of Cheryl’s mother and the birth of two daughters, Elizabeth and
Kathryn. In l995 they looked forward to one day becoming grandparents after
their daughters married. ...And the beat went on.
Then, very suddenly, after only 26 years of the dance, the beat stopped
...and the silence was more than deafening. It was excruciatingly still. Julian
Fletcher was dead.
But Cheryl Fletcher was determined not to be overcome by the silence, or the
stillness. Experts tell us many people give in to grief and let it cripple
their lives. But Cheryl, knowingly and perhaps unknowingly, took steps to
ensure that the silence would give in to her, that out of the stillness her own
beat would resume.
The initial silence was immobilizing, she admitted. Cheryl and two friends,
Donna Hungeling and Nikki Van Der Grinten, were traveling in England in March
of l997. They’d gone to Bath to visit Cheryl’s youngest daughter
Kathryn. When the three returned to their hotel, they discovered Donna’s
husband had been calling her every hour on the hour.
Cheryl said she was concerned that there may have been trouble in the
Hungeling family, so she went with Donna to the phone, to be a source of
strength if it was needed. As the conversation unfolded, she learned it was she
who needed the support.
Her husband Julian, an avid runner and model of fitness, had been found dead
in his bed by Donna’s husband. A neighbor, who had noticed a stack of
newspapers outside the Fletcher home, had called Bill Hungeling to come check
on his friend. The coroner said Julian had died of dysrhythmia.
“It was an intense shock,” Cheryl said. “I heard the words on
an intellectual level, but on an emotional level I didn’t believe my
husband was gone. We were supposed to grow old together. I was not supposed to
be a widow at the age of 48.”
In shock, she acted mechanically. “I didn’t think about anything
except what had to be done. I became very logical and practical, not
emotional,” she said. She began to clean the room, pack her suitcase for
the trip home and began searching through her address books for the family and
friends who would need to be notified of her husband’s death.
“I’m very much a control person and the one thing I recall is
letting go and letting the people around me take control of things,” she
said. “They told me where I needed to be and what I needed to do
next.”
Then, “My thoughts turned to my daughters. How was I going to tell them
that Julian wouldn’t be there to walk them down the aisle on their wedding
days? How could I tell them their Dad was gone forever? I struggled in my mind
to find words that didn’t have the finality that death does,” she
said. “But I couldn’t find them, so I simply told each of the girls,
‘Your father is dead.’”
Telling them turned out to be “the most gut-wrenching experience I have
ever endured,” she said. “You feel empty inside. You have to tell the
people you care about the most in this world something that at the time you
don’t even believe yourself is true. You feel so helpless because when you
see their pain, there is nothing you can do to take it away or lessen it.”
Despite the pain it was a step she had to take.
Donna’s husband arranged for Cheryl and her daughters to fly home. When
they got there, the first task was to make funeral arrangements.
Kathryn worked with Sister Mary Kay Finneran, SC, then campus minister at
St. Pius X High School in Atlanta, who is an extended part of the Fletcher
family, to plan the funeral they all wanted. Cheryl said that despite the fact
Julian’s life had been cut short unexpectedly, she wanted his Mass to be a
celebration of life.
“God created Julian to live,” she said. “He lived a beautiful
life, and he did it impeccably. We wanted to celebrate the life he had lived on
earth and the eternal life he was beginning with God.” The funeral was a
gift to Julian and those who loved him. Cheryl said she had to give it. It was
a step she had to take.
The funeral service reminded Cheryl of her husband’s life. A
parishioner at Immaculate Heart of Mary, Julian was a convert to the Catholic
faith. He served on various pastoral councils and committees and, in addition,
was a eucharistic minister and member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He
was also deeply involved in pro-life efforts.
An industrial engineer by profession working at Lucent Technologies, Julian
was also a warm, caring father. He was active at the high school his daughters
attended. He was president of the St. Pius Home and School Association from
1992-93. He was active in the St. Pius Arts Society and the Athletic
Association and for numerous years he coordinated a Dads Day of Recollection.
And he was a man many people loved for his kindness, Cheryl said. “He
was a surrogate husband to many of my friends because there was nothing he
couldn’t make, fix or do.”
The funeral helped Cheryl review her husband’s earthly life. But it
also reminded her of the church’s teaching on the Resurrection and that
comforted her.
“Our faith teaches us that Julian has begun a new life with Christ.
That gives me the strength to ‘Let go and let God,’ and to keep going
myself,” she said. “While I miss him, I realize that each moment I
spent with him was a gift from God and I am truly grateful for that gift,”
she said. She had to come to that. It was a step she had to take.
After family and friends left her side and her daughters returned to school
and work, the comfort of giving Julian what was left to give, and the presence
of those who care, gave way to the void that Julian’s absence left. Cheryl
said she was engulfed by grief.
“I missed the everyday things,” she said. “I missed the
normalcy of seeing Julian walk through the front door after work, of having
dinner and going for a walk together. It was really the mundane things that
reminded me that my best friend was no longer by my side.”
What struck home the hardest, she said, was that she never got to say the
good-bye she would have said if she had known they would never again share
farewells. A family standing alongside one dying of cancer at least has the
opportunity to be with the loved one, to care for him, to say good-bye, she
noted. “But the way Julian died, it was as if he just disappeared. I did
not experience dying. I just experienced death,” she said. She realized
she needed help.
Cheryl joined a support group for the recently bereaved at the Cathedral of
Christ the King in Atlanta, moderated by the late Hugh Butler. “It was one
of the smartest things I've ever done,” she said. “The group taught
me so much.”
It was through this group that she learned that sharing helped to dilute the
pain and that emotions she was experiencing were normal. “It was difficult
to go to that first meeting because I hurt so much,” Cheryl said. But she
admits it was something she had to do. It was a step she had to take.
The relationships she developed with people who had similar losses helped
her see that God had been present with her all along. She recalled talking with
her husband not long before his death about a passage in a book she was
reading. In that conversation he had said that he was not afraid of dying.
“God was preparing me even then for what was coming,” she said.
“And when the moment came, God had surrounded me with close friends and
planted me in England so I could be the one to tell our youngest
daughter,” she added. “When I stepped back and looked at the big
picture, I realized God had been in control of everything and seen to it that I
had help to carry this cross.” She worked at taking the step back. It was
a step she had to take.
Not long after Julian died, Cheryl gave many of his possessions to those she
felt would benefit from them. “We had a friend who didn’t have an
appropriate suit for an interview,” she said. “I gave him several of
Julian’s suits to help out. Julian would have approved of this. And doing
it allowed me to share Julian with others one last time. Julian would not have
wanted me to keep a shrine of his stuff. He would have wanted it used very
practically,” she said.
A year after Julian died, Cheryl took off her wedding band despite the fact
she had no particular interest in dating or remarrying. “Taking my ring
off was part of the acceptance of Julian’s death,” she said. “I
came to feel wearing the ring was like living a lie.” However, she still
wears a ring that she bought in Bath the day her husband died. “This is
the last gift Julian gave me and it will always be precious to me,” she
said. Taking the wedding ring off was hard. But it was a step she had to take.
A few months after removing the ring, it seemed right to sell the house in
which she and her husband had spent 14 years of their lives together, the house
in which they had raised their children. “It was important to me to live
in the house for a year after Julian died,” she said. “But there came
a point at which I had to move to rearrange my memories. There was just too
much Julian in that house.”
Moving was an opportunity for a fresh start. Moving also forced her to sort
through many of Julian’s possessions, which helped her work through her
loss.
“Selling the house has enabled me to put some of these memories behind
me. My new home is a place where I can start making new memories,” she
said. It was not easy. But it was a step she had to take.
Cheryl made the decision early on to overcome grief rather than letting
grief overcome her. She continued working as an interior decorator and living
as she did before Julian’s death.
“It would be easy for me to stay home and shut out the rest of the
world,” she said. “But that is not what God asks of us. God gives us
life to live to the fullest and that is what I’ve tried to do since Julian
died. Julian’s life is my example of that kind of living.”
But grief doesn’t end in a few weeks or even a few months. So one has
to learn to cope, Cheryl said. “It’s a different road for everyone
and we each choose what path we will take on our journey. Some days the path is
filled with darkness. Other days you can see light at the end of the tunnel. No
day is forever and that’s what I held on to,” she said.
Even now, almost two years after Julian’s passing, darkness creeps in
and obscures the hope. “When I see one of Julian’s tools, or attend a
wedding alone, my mind remembers the way things were,” Cheryl admitted.
“When I go to an event where there is dancing, I feel left out and very
much alone. I often find myself needing to leave because there is such an empty
space in my heart. My best friend and dance partner of 26 years is gone and the
loneliness engulfs me in the moment,” she explained.
Other days, she said she pulls strength from remembering the promise of the
Resurrection, from new close relationships forged in sorrow and faith, from the
awareness that the God who unfolded the details in her time of agony is the
same God who unfolds her future. “I’ve come to realize God’s
presence and so I can’t say that bad things have happened to me,”
Cheryl said. “I simply begin each and every day saying, ‘Thank you
Lord for surrounding me with your love and blessing.’”
Cheryl had hoped to celebrate her husband’s 50th birthday with a road
race because he loved running. Instead, she and a group of friends organized a
road race that will fund a scholarship in memory of her husband at St. Pius
High School. “This is one way Julian’s legacy lives on,” Cheryl
said. “By celebrating the things that were important in his life, we are
able to recognize and encourage a deserving student who has a whole life to
live yet.”
While life without Julian will never be the same as life with him, she
acknowledges this kind of celebrating reiterates the gratitude in her heart for
having had him at all, and the contribution his life made on the earth.
This celebrating was an easy step to take. It was easier than helping her
children when she was devastated herself. It was easier than thanking God for
what was. It was easier than seeking support when she could hardly stand. It
was easier than recognizing God’s plan and easier than letting go. Still
it was a step she had to take. It was the first step of the new dance she calls
her own.
|
