Too Fast

I read this story in the newspaper about a man and woman asleep in bed when this car plowed through the wall, killing the woman and injurying  the man.  The man's injuries were mild, but I could see the shock in his eyes, feel the pain that was to come.  Death had come swiftly, but had it ever been slow?
My husband had an aneurysm.  It burst and two weeks later it was over.  There was no warning.  No  time to say goodbye.  But even if he'd been sick with cancer or something that would have given us time to say goodbye, it still would have been the same.  Too fast.
I watched my Mother while she cared for my dying grandmother.  Her days and nights were filled with caring for her mother.  It was doctor's appointments, cooking, bathing, etc, everthing a caregiver is required to do.  And then one day it was over.  And I watched my mother try to carve out a new life while the old one still clung to her, still felt real.  She didn't know how to handle the days and nights that followed.  She was still in caregiver mode, only my grandmother no longer required care.  "I can't believe it's over," she'd say.  "Just like that.  My Mother is no longer here.  She doesn't need me anymore."  Mom didn't know what to do with herself.  She was a caregiver without a job.
Now, I understand.  No matter how long it takes for a person to pass, it still feels too fast for us.  It's difficult to adjust.  There's no routine to draw from.  How do  you wake up one day with an entirely new life--one that doesn't include a person so important in your life?  How is it possible that this person is no longer here?  No longer needs us?  It seems shockingly cruel that one day you're a wife or husband, and the next this new thing called a widow/widower.  I fight daily  to figure out this new role, but the man who'd guided me for so many years is no longer here.  Oh, how I long to talk to him, to ask him what I should do.  But now I will have to find the answers myself. I'll have a lifetime to do so.  It's unimaginable!