Widows & Widowers Support Group
This community is dedicated to those who have lost a husband, wife, or partner. Anything is open for discussion here, with the hope that we can focus on grief, bereavement, life after loss, and continuing on after a great loss.
You can disagree, and you can be mad at me for writing this, the journey we go through when we lose a spouse is horrible, but....it forces us to analyze who we are, who we want to be, how we want to live our lives. In my personal journey, it forced me to grow in unexpected ways, gave me an understanding of life and loss that I never expected. Grief made me grow into a different person, really, a better person than I was before, more aware of others and their struggles and the finite beauty of our lives.
At first, you see nothing and feel nothing but grief and loss, it overwhelms you. It is like drowning, but when you start to catch your breathe and start treading water, you see an entirely different world, and you make a choice. Actually, you make many choices and all of them impact who you become and they are not easy choices, but you choose. You choose to clean the closet, or not. You choose to find a new job, or stay with the old one. You choose to sell the house, keep the house, buy a dog, fix the window, clean the car, etc... And you choose and you build on those choices. And slowly you gain confidence in those choices and in yourself. You still grieve but you learn to live your life in grief.
And at some point, at least for me, you choose life, you choose risk, you choose putting it all out there. You choose to fight for real joy. Are you joyful all the time? No. I still wake up every morning and say J.R. is not here; but then I say my love for him still is. I then say but my mother is here, my dogs are here, I am here, Pat is here. Life is good and I love it. I will carry J.R in a special place in my heart but I will live a full life dammit! I will have holidays, joy, dinner in front of the T.V. I will also have more sorrow and more loss in my life. That is the price of truly living.
So does it get better? I don't know. It has changed forever, it has made me truly appreciate my life, my choices, my loves. What is better? I don't know, I only know that I choose to live and make the most out of every second I have. Have I found balance? Yes. Have I found joy? Yes. Do I believe in happily ever after? No, I believe in happy for the moment, for the day. I am no longer in that dark place struggling not to drown, I am in the light, in the moment, for now.
Hugs,
Val
