Kate Seamons

Sudden Loss of husband, Ben

Hi Kate! Tell us, what’s your story?

I’m a 42-year-old mom of two girls who runs a news website. On good days I get up at 5:30 to Peloton, walk the kids to school, chug through work, run them to activities, and cook some kind of vegetarian-bowl-type dinner. On tough days (there are plenty) it’s yelling at kids to hurry up and takeout for dinner and nowhere near 8 hours of sleep. Hiking makes me happy, as does snuggling with my kiddos, cooking, having music playing as much as possible, long talks with friends, and the bookclub I’ve been part of for almost a decade.

Let’s talk about your loss. Can you share about your life leading up to it?

Life in 2016 was good. In May, we bought a magical house that had plenty of room for Ben and me and our two girls, then 2 and 4. It was built by a German couple in the late ‘80s but had a real midcentury modern feel – massive windows and endless light. Ben (an artist – abstract oil paintings) had set up a new art studio and was getting in good chunks of studio time. He had just turned 40 and we had a big party on a warm September night on our deck with loads of friends.

How about the day your husband, Ben, died?

I got a knock on the door at 3am and two officers told me Ben was dead. I don’t particularly like to talk about the details, but he had gone to an overlook with a friend who wanted to get his advice about some life decisions and fell. It was—and still is, more than five years later—almost impossible to process and very surreal. He was here and then I never saw him again. I’ll never really be able to put it into words.

What was life like in the immediate weeks after the loss of Ben? How did you cope?

Complete shock. A blur, although a lot of the first year was a blur. Ben was a truly remarkable person—someone who never met a stranger and was extremely charismatic—so the loss hit everyone very hard. My family (who mostly live in various parts of the Northeast; I was in TN) dropped everything to come help me and the girls. The first month was filled with the long and awful series of decisions you have to make when someone dies and planning his memorial. Then it was just the awful task of living. On the day he died I made the decision that the only way I was going to get through this was to start from here: Ben is dead. I was destroyed, and I felt like going down a road of what ifs and trying to understand what happened and how it could have been prevented was just way more than I could handle. My goal was just to make it through the end of the day. I started therapy within weeks of his death and my therapist gave me some incredible direction, which was that all I had to try to do for a while was a) not get fired and b) be a good mom. I didn’t have to do a great job, or be a great mom, or a highly functioning person. I just had to scrape by each day and get to the next.

What was a specific low point or struggle you experienced?

Too many to count. Parenting grieving kids was exhausting. The girls, especially the older one, had major sleep issues after Ben’s death, so it was like having a newborn again in terms of how much sleep I was getting. I was so lonely for Ben. I just missed him indescribably. There were so many unexpected moments that just cut like a knife: seeing a male friend play with his child, driving through a college campus and seeing a dad dropping his daughter off for the school year, registering my daughter for kindergarten and seeing the number of parents who came as couples to do it, getting happily asked by my OB-GYN when I was going to have a third kid.

Grief was a long, long process. Year two was harder than year one (I think I was more awake to the grief) and year three was when I struggled so much with depression.

How did you manage to find joy in those low moments?

One of my sisters, Jess, gave me an incredible gift that gave me an outlet on those bad days. She lives in Philadelphia and was trying to think of a way to be present whenever I needed her despite being so far away. As she left after Ben’s memorial she gave me a wrapped gift and told me it was a “rainy day gift” that I was to open in a low moment, and that when I did I should tell her and she’d send me another. On days that felt unbearable it was a gift in the truest sense of the word to be able to go into my closet, take the latest package off the shelf, read her card, and open the gift. It was a breath, and it was available to me at any hour of any day. Five+ years later I still have a Rainy Day gift waiting for me in my closet.

Once I stopped feeling so paralyzed I started recognizing that everything that had been given to me from my community—those Rainy Day gifts, letters, food, flowers, phone calls, visits—were so sustaining, and that the gratitude I felt for them triggered a sort of joy. And then I started finding joy in doing those things for others. I had always felt like, as a working mom with a full plate, it was important to conserve energy—say no to things so that the laundry could get done. I started realizing that the more I gave to others the more I got out of it, and that was really fulfilling.

How do you live life differently from before the loss? Has your attitude about life shifted?

Completely. I feel like I’ve become much more like Ben. He had a much more difficult road in life (family stress, financial stress, grief and loss) and was the most joyful, loving, and giving person I had ever met, and I was never able to understand it. I always thought I’d be bitter if I were in his shoes. But I came to understand some of what he understood.

I felt in a lot of ways like when Ben died, I died, and every day since has felt like a bonus. I had lived my worst-case scenario so I felt untethered from some of the stress or fear I felt previously. I’m quicker to find joy. I feel deeper gratitude for what I have.

You started a company called “Rainy Day Boxes.” When did that transition from a gift from your sister to a business?

I had started making ad-hoc Rainy Day Boxes for friends who were experiencing grief and loss, with a slight twist (instead of sending them items one at a time, I’d wrap 5-6 and put them in a box, each with its own card). I saw that an experience that had been so meaningful for me on the receiving end was also deeply satisfying on the giving end. After many conversations, we decided it was a concept we could replicate, and so we began the process of building the business.

What do you want others to know about grief?

One thing I realized when Ben died was that all my instincts about grief were essentially wrong—ie, if it was a friend going through what I was going through, I would have tried to keep things “light and happy” by not bringing the person up or asking about them and waiting for my friend to tell me what she needed.

All so wrong! It’s a gift to be able to talk about Ben. He is and was always on my mind, so someone asking me about him and how I was doing wasn’t going to suddenly remind me of my grief and make me sad—it was going to make me feel less isolated. When it comes to help, I pretty much never took anyone up on their offer to “just tell me what you need.” The people who said “can I bring dinner this night” or “can I come over for a visit this day” or “can I help you with the girls this weekend” made it so easy for me. I wasn’t capable of much more than a yes or no answer.

How can a person best be there to support a loved one who is grieving?

See above! When people asked “how are you?” it was hard because duh, destroyed. So I’d usually mumble “fine.” I found it’s better to ask “how are you today?” because maybe today is better than yesterday, or worse, and that’s easier to talk about.

Offer to do things in a way that only requires a yes or no answer. Make clear that no is always an acceptable answer.

Realize the grieving process will take years. They won’t be “back to normal” after a month or two.

What would you tell others who are going through something similar?

Time is your friend. It may not feel like it. In some ways I hated every day I got further away from my last day with Ben. But the pain dulls over time. It spikes plenty of times, and it’s part of every day, but that acute, unbearable, body-shaking feeling will go away.

Repeating this helped too: I have survived all of my hardest days.

Any resources that were helpful for you that others might be able to utilize?

I am extremely grateful that I was able to afford therapy and found an exceptional psychotherapist who has worked with me for the last 5.5 years. She has helped me understand my grief and navigate this new life.

What brings you joy now?

So, so much! Moments. Cuddling under a blanket with my kids. Hiking. Traveling anywhere. Hugging friends. Sunsets. Writing. Arranging flowers. Taking walks in the neighborhood. Offering help to someone who needs it.

About 3.5 years after Ben died I felt ready to start dating again, with absolutely no intention of anything more serious than finding an interesting adult to have dinner with. I ended up really liking the interesting adult I found and we got married last May. There have been a lot of challenges with all the change, and my grief for Ben is still so sharp that sometimes I feel punched in the stomach, but my relationship has brought a lot of joy too.

How has the grief shifted in your new marriage? I know personally that when you are in a new relationship, people assume you are "over" your loss or that it eliminates your grief. Would you be willing to talk a little more about that?

For years my expectation was that I wouldn’t get remarried, so falling in love again caught me off guard and there have been a lot of feelings to navigate. I'm still fairly new into my second marriage – nearly a year and a half – and I feel a huge amount of gratitude for the relationship I have and for the space my new husband gives me to miss Ben and talk about him whenever I need to.

My husband didn't know Ben, or any part of that life, and so I look to him for love and fun and partnership, not to be my main grief support. I have friends and family who have supported me in that way for nearly six years, and they continue to fulfill that role for me.  

The grief I feel is always shifting, but it hasn’t lessened. It’s crazy to me sometimes how it mellows out at times but then feels just as sharp as it ever has. I think the people who matter to me know there is no getting “over it,” so I don’t feel like people have made unfair assumptions. Maybe it helps that I try to be open with people about how I’m still hurting, and how parenting children who have lost a parent involves so much hurt and sadness.

Check out Rainy Day Boxes’ website or Instagram to learn more.