What I learned during the first 5 years of widowhood

March 29, 2017: The Day My Spouse Died

The list below is in no particular order on how I survived the first five years as a widow.

1. I didn’t want to continue on after John’s death. Realized that wanting to die and wishing to end my life were not the same though. The pain after a spousal loss is brutal, and nothing will prepare you for it. Nothing and nobody will ease that crushing pain. Losing your will to live is a result of wishing to escape the pain of grief. I never thought about ending my life, but I didn’t want to live without my love. I learned its possible to move forward without him.
2. Breathing is not something I ever thought I would have to remember to do. Forcing air in and out of the lungs sounds basic, but it didn’t feel like I could get enough air. Lack of oxygen made me feel nauseous and dizzy. I learned to focus only on breathing.
3. My brain protected me with numbness the first year or so. When that numbness wore off, the real work of moving through grief began. Moving through grief takes a lot of work.
4. The amount of anger I felt could fill 100 Olympic sized pools. Why did my spouse leave this Earth when everyone else seemed to still have perfectly intact families? Well meaning comments from others trying to provide comfort would set me on edge to the point of thinking of nothing else but those platitudes and becoming angry. I realize now that that anger was a response to the horrific pain I felt. Most people really were well meaning.
5. I often felt like nobody understood what I was going through and that also made me angry. Nobody does understand unless you have experienced such a loss, and even then everyone processes differently.
6. Well meaning advice even from mental health professionals was not always what was right for me, and there is no shame in handling my grief my way. One told me I should get rid of all of his things barely 2 months in because otherwise I couldn’t move forward. Another told me I should force my adult daughter to accept my new relationship. That advice might be right for some but not for me.
7. Grief is ugly and only a few people were brave enough to brave the ride with me. God is the only one who can handle the entire burden.
8. My grief, my journey, my healing. See #7. Grief is ugly, and if you can’t handle it, look away and don’t pretend to care. I would get angry having to protect others from the ugliness of grief. I hated answering when someone asked how I was doing. Surviving is what I was doing. That’s it. If you are so distraught that you can hardly breathe that question is absurd. It is difficult to know what to say to someone grieving.
9. I resented my spouse for leaving me to deal with everything. It’s an overwhelming feeling knowing you have nobody helping with the bills, parenting, maintaining the household, all of it. There is incredible emptiness and loneliness knowing you are not part of a couple anymore and not considered married. It sucks…and people who judge you for being angry don’t understand the enormity of it.
10. I also resented anyone trying to relate to my situation who wasn’t widowed. My spouse is not working overseas or divorced from me, he is dead. Gone. Forever.
11. The pain of loss never goes away. The pain only feels lighter because of learning to cope.
12. It’s surprising to laugh one minute and feel intense sadness the next. It’s part of the grief journey, and that never ends.
13. I have remarried. That doesn’t end the sadness or the lifetime of healing. Being happy and moving forward does not cancel out or erase my late husband. He is forever a part of me.
14. I am a survivor. The word survivor has no real meaning until you are one.
15. My brain doesn’t function the same after his death, and probably never will.
16. I’m not the same person I was when married to John, but also not the same person before I married John. I’m more damaged and scarred, but much stronger and resilient as hell.
17. Keeping expectations low on what was possible to accomplish helped in the early days. Sometimes just drinking enough water to re hydrate after crying was all I could do.
18. After 5 years, my biggest challenge is making changes to accommodate my new relationship while carefully treading water with my daughter’s feelings. I’m finding it’s nearly impossible to do gracefully.
19. Sometimes I feel like I am still holding my breath, waiting for another traumatic event or bad news. Once you realize the absolute worst imaginable can happen, it is hard to let down your guard.
20. I have learned to practice gratitude and am grateful that I had my beloved, John, in my life. He brought so much joy and love to all who knew him.