Moving On After Losing a Spouse to Cancer
- More than five years have passed since David Bowie's liver cancer death, but his widow, Iman, is still mourning him.
- She has an unlikely situation to thank for her healing: the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020, she left New York City and migrated to the upstate home that brought her so much pain.
- Recovering after losing a loved one to cancer, especially a partner, isn't a "one-and-done" process, many members of the SurvivorNet community have told us.
In January 2016 at the age of 69, David Bowie died after a hard-fought battle with liver cancer. The world lost an icon, and we all collectively mourned him. But for his widow, Iman, now 66, her husband of 24 years had passed, and she couldn't bring herself to stay at their Upstate New York home. It was too painful.
Read More"Being here meant I couldn't escape how I felt. I had to sit with my grief, confront it, go through it," she says. "And that's what this place did for me. It literally saved me."
David Bowie's Cancer Battle
Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer in mid-2014 and fought the disease for 18 months before his death in January 2016. The legendary singer kept his cancer battle out of the public eye, and he continued to release music during his fight. The music icon released his 15th album, Blackstar, two days before his death.
When Colon Cancer Spreads to the Liver
According to the American Cancer Society, about 42,230 new cases of liver cancer will be diagnosed in 2021. Causes of liver cancer may include excessive alcohol consumption or a family history of the disease. There are several different types of liver cancer, and the most common is hepatocellular carcinoma.
Symptoms of liver cancer may include abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss, decrease or loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea and jaundice.
Moving On After Losing a Spouse to Cancer
Recovering after losing a loved one to cancer, especially a partner, isn't a "one-and-done" process, many members of the SurvivorNet community have told us. One widower even told us that the idea of "moving on" isn't realistic, or even desired.
"I don't even think I want to move on," Doug Wendt, who lost his wife of 25 years to ovarian cancer, says during a previous interview with SurvivorNet. "But I do want to move forward, and that's an important distinction. I encourage anyone who goes through this journey as a caregiver who then has to face loss to think very carefully about how to move forward."
The point is that moving on and dealing with grief is different for everyone; Iman's experience moving on after losing David Bowie has been different than Wendt's experience losing his wife, and that's OK. Dealing with the grief of losing a loved one and recovering from that experience is a highly personal process, and everyone goes through it differently.
'Therapy Saved My Life': After Losing a Loved One, Don't be Afraid to Ask for Help
Camila Legaspi, in a previous interview with SurvivorNet, shared her own advice on grief after her mother died of breast cancer. For her, therapy made all the difference. This isn’t something Iman has said helped her heal after David Bowie’s death, but it could be the right option for you.
"Therapy saved my life," Legaspi says. "I was dealing with some really intense anxiety and depression at that point. It just changed my life. Because I was so drained by all the negativity that was going on, going to a therapist helped me realize that there was still so much out there for me, that I still had my family, that I still had my siblings."
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