The Most Difficult Thing
Perhaps the most difficult thing about losing someone is defining the shape of your grief. It comes in many forms often tucked away innocuously in some random event. One day you feel hopeful and truly accepting of the loss and the next moment you are turned asunder with emotional wounds ripping the very core and fiber of your being. It is difficult to slay this dragon unless you can identify it, describe its existence, explain how it works its way into your day and wreaks havoc in your sleepless nights.
Grief came to me with a vengeance after everybody left. The funeral and burial ceremonies were over, the heartfelt hugs of affirmation of strengths a flitting remembrance, and then there was this void. This bottomless pit of nothingness was smothering me, pulling me back into a wailing, anguish and pain filled cry for validation. Am I living or did I just die along with my dead husband’s physical remains?
It certainly felt that way. A life lost sucks your capacity to feel alive. It numbs you. It makes you less able to feel the joy of living. It robs you of hope. Grief has a way of opening up a dam of conflicting emotions difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, I am relieved that the struggle for my husband to deal with a terminal illness is over. On the other hand, I feel a terrible guilt that maybe, he will still be alive if I cared for him more. Maybe I should have been more attentive, more loving, less contradictory, and more involved.
Will the outcomes be any different if I gave everything I could within the limits of my human strength? Am I not subject to the vagaries of emotional turmoil, beset by the hunger pangs of my own needs, and devoured by my own insecurities? I do not have the answer to every question nor do I have every tool, resources or the skills to rise up to every uncharted situation. I am just human. I have my own frailties to contend with. I am not God.
I did what I thought was best when the situation presented itself. It may not have given what I hoped for 100% but it should give me the peace and comfort of knowing I did my best. Is this enough? If the explanation was thorough, the rationalization so convincing, the justification complete, why do I feel in utter schism? In a bottomless pit of sorrows, there really is not enough. I just have to believe that this too shall pass.
Grief came to me with a vengeance after everybody left. The funeral and burial ceremonies were over, the heartfelt hugs of affirmation of strengths a flitting remembrance, and then there was this void. This bottomless pit of nothingness was smothering me, pulling me back into a wailing, anguish and pain filled cry for validation. Am I living or did I just die along with my dead husband’s physical remains?
It certainly felt that way. A life lost sucks your capacity to feel alive. It numbs you. It makes you less able to feel the joy of living. It robs you of hope. Grief has a way of opening up a dam of conflicting emotions difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, I am relieved that the struggle for my husband to deal with a terminal illness is over. On the other hand, I feel a terrible guilt that maybe, he will still be alive if I cared for him more. Maybe I should have been more attentive, more loving, less contradictory, and more involved.
Will the outcomes be any different if I gave everything I could within the limits of my human strength? Am I not subject to the vagaries of emotional turmoil, beset by the hunger pangs of my own needs, and devoured by my own insecurities? I do not have the answer to every question nor do I have every tool, resources or the skills to rise up to every uncharted situation. I am just human. I have my own frailties to contend with. I am not God.
I did what I thought was best when the situation presented itself. It may not have given what I hoped for 100% but it should give me the peace and comfort of knowing I did my best. Is this enough? If the explanation was thorough, the rationalization so convincing, the justification complete, why do I feel in utter schism? In a bottomless pit of sorrows, there really is not enough. I just have to believe that this too shall pass.