A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
A link to all previous Grieving Room diaries
I wrote a different diary for WYFP that emphasized the current problems of coping with post-mortem arrangements and second-guessing actions, such as choosing between an emergency room at a VA or a private hospital.
Here I just want to honor my late spouse who died about two months ago. My spouse was trained as an engineer, served in the military and had a father who fought in Korea. Abused as a child, that life in the military ended when PTSD emerged after a classified mission that was both meritorious but will never be acknowledged.
My spouse was estranged from any family, married before and was divorced many years before we met. We lived together for eleven years and were married six years ago. As I shared a similar estrangement from my extended family, I have only my mother and my niece as close family.
Even after seventeen years I know so little about my spouse and even as I clean up the house we shared, I know that even though we loved each other, we had little information about our histories as interesting as the one we had together has been. It's mot regrettable that our history together produced no children but we tried to build a business together. It resulted in some interesting and even pioneering innovations in areas such as post-surgical medical technology and self-help for a web community as well as outdoor recreation accessories.
My sadness comes from finding a DNR (do not resuscitate) document that was created in the first few months we lived together and that I did not find until this week. While we knew we shared DNR intentions, to discover how early in our relationship my spouse was developing contingencies for passing away. Our life together was so blessed by not confronting these realities but it made so much of the past few months of medical emergencies so much clearer.
I know the Kübler-Ross stages of grief and am no stranger to depression but while I don't know which one I'm at now, I know that each object I come across in our house makes me sad.