I come here occasionally to let some frustration vent out or to just speak the words that I can't actually say to anyone. I just reread what was on my mind a couple weeks after my husband died almost 3 years ago. I don't remember writing those words but I do remember feeling those feelings. Some those feeling haven't left me. Although a lot of the pain has lessened there are still times that the grief will sneak up on me. Unfortunately I can't make myself cry. I envy people who can cry at the drop of a hat. Not those that cry to elicit a response, not those that cry to make people feel sorry for them but those that genuinely cry. I feel that need, I can feel it deep down in my soul, pain crying out to be heard. But I get nothing. Sure there are the occasional tears which well up and drop for a second and then vanish. That is not the cleansing type of cry that I feel that my soul is crying out for. I have heard people talk about heartbreak. For a long time I didn't understand about the physical feeling of heartbreak, to me it was just a word used to describe grief. I was wrong, it is a feeling, a physical symptom of extreme grief. A feeling that the heart is indeed breaking or so hurt that it feels like it could break. I have experienced the loss of my father, my mother and now my husband. I don't say this to gain sympathy only to share that I do know what it feels like to experience loss, the loss of a loved one. These losses have affected me, more so now than when I was younger. When I lost my dad and my mom, I had my husband to lean on to help me carry the burden of grief. When I lost my husband, even though I had my children, it was different. I had to carry this burden on my own. I had to make my own way through the mine field of grief. People can tell you what they went thru dealing with the loss of the person that you shared your life with but until you experience it there are no words to accurately describe what you go thru. Each persons journey is different. My husband and I often joked that I had no heart or was coldhearted. I am sure that that is what I appeared to be like to many people. I went back to work after a week and although it might have been considered dedication to a job, it was more of a coping mechanism. I can't sit around and dwell on what was so I went back to work. Looking back I probably should have taken more time for me, but that at the time I did what I thought I should do. Yes, I am sure that it appeared that I was dealing well with my grief, you can hide a lot behind a smile. I was getting on with life, but postponing dealing with the grief.
Grief comes in stages. What they don't tell you is how long it takes to work thru those stages. Some come fairly quickly, some are sneaky and don't show up for a long time. Some stages never happen, some happen even before the loss, if it is the case of a terminal illness. I have heard that people will say "why me?", I said "why not me? or "why not him?" There was not a reason that my husband should have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but cancer happens. Just like life happens, cancer happens. My husband didn't do anything to deserve cancer, he lived his life, he enjoyed his life, he lived mostly on his own terms, life was good up until the last 8 months of it. But he endured, he perservered. He made the best of a bad situation. We laughed, we cried, but we had hope, at least on the outside. We both knew the outcome was not going to be good.
