Before mass the other Saturday evening, our deacon asked me how I was doing and said he thinks about me frequently. I replied, "I am doing good, I think, and others seem to say so too. I have my moments but I expect them and I let them be." He asked how long we had been married and when I told him 53 years, he replied, "when you share a lifetime together like that and that is a lifetime for many and beyond a lifetime for others, you can expect to grieve. It is absolutely perfectly natural." I shared with him that I think I am at peace, if this is peace because I know I did all I could for those months and the last hardest weeks, when I so worried about how I would continue to care for him as he became weaker and could hardly get up out of bed. All I could do was pray. But God was with me and still is always. I knew Jerry despised becoming frail and feeble, his main complaint was he hated not being able to do anything, he would say, "I can't do anything." He had always been strong, healthy. He had overcome and survived. At Jerry's last breath when he gasped and was gone immediately and I saw the peaceful look of comfort that came all over his face immediately, I knew he was better off, that his struggle ended with victory of eternal rest and that we will be together again, that we will be together in my heart here on earth as long as I live." " He agreed that my faith is my great sustainer and I replied, "yes, I know ...it has held me through the loss of my only son and others...it is all I have left and it will just have to be there for me. Somehow I always suspected I might become4 a widow because Jerry was 7 years older than me, but with his health and the longevity of his family, his genes surely meant a long life ahead. He would tease that he would see 100 and surely he could have if those lungs had not been ravaged."
Later, after mass, at home, I pondered if all the practice I have had these past few years in losing my dearest to deaths has numbed me or prepared me. I have been blessed with little despair, not the weeping and sobbing as some do at all. The losses may have helped me to realize that death is the end of this life for each and every one of us, no one gets out of this life alive. It certainly has required me to become resilient, but then I had Jerry alongside me as my rock, now just me and God. I have had plenty of grief rehearsals.
Currently a longtime friend from PA is grieving and marking her first a month loss of her husband. But she has family and from her FB posts her daughter stays the night with her, she does not face aloneness and seems to be unable to cope. She is truly mournful to the depths. I feel sorry for her and yet, I feel a bit annoyed. I think, "get a hold of yourself, you have support, family people right there....and remember you are not the only widow in the world." But I do not say that to her, I only do as others, offer a few encouraging words and will send her another card soon. And yet I compare to myself and my situation. I know we are different people and perhaps I am super strong because I have to be. There is no one who will shoulder this with me. There are days when I hear from nobody and on gloomy cold wintry days I keep myself busy inside doing something, any project, because I have no human contact. I can make phone calls and I do. I can post to FB and talk with others and I do, but it is not the same as having another person around. But I just have to get used to it, Jerry is not coming back. This I know.
t is now just me and I must do my darndest no matter what. I must take care of me. I promised Jerry I would. In fact I think once I got it into his mind that I would be ok and he believed that he was free to leave this earth. The last week he would say, "you are strong, you will be ok, and I will always watch for you." This little cartoon I saw years ago is so appropriate, .
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| My mother and father 1943 Charleston, SC |
young only 20 and alone there in South Carolina when she got that dreadful news, her mother, my grandmother went to her on the train and brought her back to PA. Mom always said, "life is for the living." She did remarry and life did go on. My grandma became a widow later in life and then immediately moved into our house. Years later when she came out to CA to help me, a dumb young, struggling single mother, she said that she wished she would have had a way to keep her own place instead of moving in and cautioned me to always be able to take care of myself. Life was different then for her, she had no income. She said back then that "you never know what life will throw at you so just be sure to keep your hands folded to the Lord.
Something else that has given me strength is my foundation in change management in career days, way back when I was implementing quality teams, etc. Part of the training focused on the stages of grief based on the research work of Elizabeth Kubler Ross into deaths. Death is the ultimate change. We learned about DABDA, and how some people cycle back and around and may become perpetually stuck in one cycle or another. She asserts there are 5 stages of grief, reflected by the first letter of each, and peoples reactions vary. They may not smoothly flowing from one stage to another. They may not move through the stages in a linear way.
- Denial What? Can't be. Will not happen. No way
- Anger How can this happen.. I do not deserve this. This is not fair. Where's God?
- Bargaining Just another month, year, day, etc. I will be a better person. I will do.....
- Depression My heart is broken. I can't go on. I want to die.
- Acceptance So this is the end. Let me be still. I can go on. I must persevere
I feel blessed and that my faith has me at acceptance. That my faith and life brought me to this. And though I do not like it, I wouldn't have chosen this, it is now here .And I must go on, alone. And keep my faith.
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