A few weeks ago, in a comment I posted here in The Grieving Room, I mentioned that, in another year after this one, my husband, Andy, will have been gone for as long as we were married, which was just shy of four years. We did know each other for four years or so before we married, but I can't pin that down precisely. There was no way at that point to predict that eventually, we'd find our way to the altar, figuratively speaking (since we were married at the care center where his mother resided, by a municipal judge who had been a long-time family friend.) We'd met originally on-line (yes, we were one of those couples) and once my allergy to cats met the fact that he had at least four of them at the time we met, I'd relegated him to the “strictly friends” category. Only the fact that my older son entered a new relationship with a young woman with two cats (they're still together, and down to one cat now—we all still miss big, lovable, orange Jed), led me to re-examine the status of the relationship with Andy, who by then was down to two cats himself.
It's just funny, how those little quirks of fate work out. Because of all those cats, I took time to really get to know the person Andy was, before leaping into a relationship with him, which broke a long-standing pattern of mine that, frankly, needed to be broken. I felt with Andy, that I'd finally “gotten it right.”
It seemed so unnecessarily cruel, then, to lose him so soon; not that our lives together as husband and wife were easy. They weren't. In that brief period, we'd gone through the loss of his job, thanks to the economic downturn, the death of his mother, and the loss of his house to foreclosure. You'd think we'd have been due for a break. Instead, I lost him, and it was my life that broke, in a very real way from which I'm still encountering reverberations I didn't anticipate and couldn't possibly have anticipated. I'm not the person I was, before my husband's death, and I will never be that person again. In sum, that's probably a good thing, too, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the process it took to get there.
I had another realization that I'm still sorting out, and suspect I will be for awhile, which is that when I pass my birthday later this year, I will be the same age my husband was when he died. His birthday just passed a few days ago, so it's probably not surprising that particular realization popped up. I'm not troubled by “survivor's guilt” exactly, but I think there will be stuff coming up somewhere on that continuum of “I'm still here, and he's not,” and I'm not sure where I'll end up with that. I suspect that's one of those things that I'll revisit from time to time as the years progress.
I don't know if it's related, but I find myself in more of a “wanting to look forward, rather than back” phase of the grieving process, at this point. Whatever comes next, I will always be Andy's widow, but I'm also myself, though I'm still figuring out who that is, and probably will be until the day I stop breathing. Perhaps it's just that the days are starting to lengthen and we've had unaccountably (global climate change, maybe?) nice weather lately—it's a beautiful, sunny day here as I'm typing this—but I've been feeling a bit more energetic than I have for some time, and, dare I say, I might be rediscovering the concept of hope. That's a concept I've been struggling with for quite some time, and I'm sure I'm not through struggling with it, but maybe, just maybe, there's a tiny bit of light showing on my horizon. I'll enjoy that sensation while it lasts.
First-of-the-year sunset from almost the westernmost point of Oahu, from my recent visit to my younger son's place in HI
Welcome, fellow travelers on the grief journey
and a special welcome to anyone new to The Grieving Room.
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Whether your loss is recent, or many years ago;
whether you've lost a person, or a pet;
or even if the person you're "mourning" is still alive,
("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time),
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have been through their own hell.
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