Jump to content
Grief Healing Discussion Groups

Adjusting


Recommended Posts

Little by little, I am learning that this is my new life. Gone is the old one. Now in its place, I have memories...memories of a love and a life that were not a dream, but were real...yet they are starting to seem more like a dream, something I made up, something elusive. I remember our falling in love, the first time he kissed me, when he poured out of his heart, "Marry me, Little One"...when I first realized I didn't want anyone else to do the job of being his wife, I wanted to be the one. Memories of our wedding day, our vows, how happy we were. Memories of all of our moments here, memories of walks, picnics, talks, sitting up together when one of us was sick, memories of our picking out our vehicles, memories of becoming grandparents, memories of his buying a shirt to match my dress. Memories of anniversaries, valentine's days, memories of his being there for me when my son went in to the service. Memories of his reassurances when I worried about my daughter. Memories of his reuniting with his daughter. Memories of his baptism, memories of so many things. How did we cram so much in to such a short time? That time seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what we would have liked. And now, in place of living life, I have memories, I have kissing his forehead in his picture goodnight. I have looking at his picture instead of getting to look into his beautiful blue eyes. For just a moment I imagine his putting his arms around me and pulling me towards him...and for just a moment, I feel comfort. Maybe he's not here to hold me anymore...but then again, maybe he is. Who is to say? Have I left the land of reality and crossed into that gray area...does it matter? All that matters is that I find him, even if just for a moment...bringing me some degree of comfort. We all find it in our own way. I feel him smiling down at me, proud of me for the strength I've shown, he knows how hard it's been, he always knows what I go through and feel, and always, he loves me and he's proud. I miss him terribly, I don't want him suffering here any more, but I sure do miss him. I don't know how I'll do all our special days without him here like he was, but I can't think about that just yet...for now it's enough to get through today. Adjusting. Trying to accept what I did not ask for. People tell you the weirdest things, grand things like how we are to learn from all this, how we're to have purpose, like it's something noble, an honor, but for now, all I feel is, it's enough to get through this day. Yes we're learning, yes I suppose there's some purpose in our being left, but for now, it's enough for me to just try and adjust to this new life...kissing a cardboard picture instead of feeling his arms around me, smelling his skin, feeling him breathe against me...all of that is gone...and memories are what have to sustain me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it "learning?" Is it "life trying to go on?" It feels like a nightmare I can't wake up from. KayC, I'm where you are right now. Have been for a day or two and it brings along with it guilt. The tears are there everyday...they come from nowhere and then they go. I talk to Gene everyday, all day.....kiss his picture...run my fingers over his picture trying to touch him. I cannot go to sleep without his picture on the pillow next to me. Memories are replacing the pain. I am accepting what I cannot change...I guess none of us have a choice. I do not torment myself with the "what if's" anymore. As Gene's older brother sternly said...no one loved Gene as much as I did. I always will. I just wish we had had a little longer. Nearly everyday I find something Gene taught me or did to prepare for me to be left-behind...he's still taking care of me. It hurts but I thank him everyday for loving me. I'm still lost but I'll figure out what to do with the days ahead of me. I will always have this empty place in my heart and soul...the part that left with Gene. It's hard to explain........it's like a black hole.....my heart beats but it doesn't feel except for the ache when I can't touch him. I know there are plenty of days of pain ahead but for now there are a few not so painful.

KayC, knowing I am not alone in the journey, knowing what I feel from day to day is what someone else feels reassures me that I am not crazy. I know I have to take what today is...I do not know what tomorrow will be like.

Your words at this post today.........it's just where I am. And reading your words makes me realize I do not have to feel guilty about not being in despair every minute for today.

Thank you for sharing KayC.

I miss you Gene!

Always Gene!

Always!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...  I am accepting what I cannot change...I guess none of us have a choice.  I do not torment myself with the "what if's" anymore. 

Dearest Kayc and Evelyn

My heart goes out to both of you today. I am happy that you are somehow able to move forward, even if it's slowly, one step at a time. One of my Jeannie's favorite prayers, which was read at her funeral by her niece was this:

Serenity

I only hope that I can learn to accept what Jeannie would want -- maybe someday, maybe..... :(

My kindest regards to both of you brave heroes. :)

LOVE IS FOREVER - ALWAYS IN MY HEART, LITTLE JEANNIE

Edited by WaltC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Walt, Jeannie's love is forever...what you have is forever. I don't think it's moving on. I think it's the torment that is easing. I am trying to do what Jeannie's prayer says. I can accept it because I have to but I don't think I'll ever move on. I'll find some way to function.

I feel I know your Jeannie so well.

The days are long but you are loved so deeply by Jeannie. Gene still listens to me with all his love.

Always Gene!

Always!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My counselor calls says this is commonly referred to as "moving on", but I take a real offense to that term so we instead refer to it as "acceptance". I will never "move on" as in "closure" and I'm real upset that so many counselors and books say that we need to. Let them lose the dearest person in the world to them and see how much moving on and closure they want! At any rate, as far as I am concerned, I am still married, I just can't get feedback from my husband right now. I'm not in denial, it's just that we had a special bond, a very special relationship that is irreplaceable and it is forever. some people can choose to do it differently and that's up to them, I only know that this is the way it is for us.

I imagine the intense pain will continue to hit us in wafts, for the rest of our lives, but we are becoming accustomed to the changes in our lives and that is not only normal but desired. No one could stay in this intense of horror forever. It is not valuing our loved one any less, I think we all agree that that is not possible, we love them more than anything in the world, but it is just realizing like Walt said, that we have to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can.

God bless you in your day to day life. Please keep coming to this site and posting, your outpouring of your heart has kept me going these past 2 1/2 months. And who knows how many others have been helped as well.

Thank you for everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really agree with you that moving on is not what we all want to do. There will never be closure for me, acceptance maybe, but I will never move on because my life stopped the day he took his last breath. I really never knew what real pain was. I had a wonderful marriage for 46 years, 4 wonderful children who gave my life purpose and put so much joy into my life. I really never knew heartache until now and this pain is so unrelentless that I wonder how long l can hold out. I wish I could have some acceptance of his death, but I still find my self crying out "I want my life back" " I want it the way it was" Deep down inside I know that will never happen, so to talk about closure for me is unacceptable. Closure will come for me when I take my last breath and join him. I live by a phrase in a song by Vince Gill "Trying to get over you, it will take dying to get it done"

My LIfe, MY love, My everything, You are just a breath away

Only you 7/1/38- 10/20/04

Grace

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, well, whatever strides I thought I'd made, whatever progress, whatever acceptance...today showed me that I've really gotten no where, for I am as down as I ever was...I feel despondent, lonely, like there's no purpose to anything. George was my purpose, my love, my ray of sunshine, and now he's gone. I wonder, does God hate me or something? Why would He take my husband? My husband! My heart cries out in agony! Labor Day was the biggest day in my family, the day we'd all go camping, and now everyone is scattered and George is gone, and I'm alone. I don't see any point in anything. I go on for my kids, but they have their own lives so I don't even see a lot of point in that. When I'm not at work, what do I do? I have nothing to look forward to but more chores that I can't keep up with by myself, and some of which I feel ill equipped to handle. Lately I have been able to imagine George holding me and for just a brief moment, I feel comfort...but today even that was gone. I should have been outside painting, but I didn't see much point. Our friends don't even bother with me, I'm no longer part of a "couple", everything's changed. And the stinkin' government! They make you fill out forms and put down if you're married or single. On my withholdings, I couldn't check "single", I just couldn't. So I'll probably get hit with taxes at the end of the year, but I'll just have to deal with it then. I never asked to be single. I'm George's wife. I just can't get an answer when I talk to him any more...but I'm still his wife.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kayc,

Your words "does God hate me or something" hit me like a bolt of lightning. I ask myself that every day and then this weekend I really started to believe it. I bought myself a little toy poodle 3 weeks ago, just wanted something to love and hold beside me. She got very sick on Friday and I took her to the Vet Saturday morning, she died Sunday night of a virus her little body just could not fight. I buried her this morning, just a month short of a year that I buried my husband. I am afraid to love anything, is God punishing me, why is he taking away the things I love. The vet told me Sunday night to take her home, there was nothing they could do to save her. I wrapped her little 1lb body in a blanket and held her in my arms until she took her last breath. The same feelings of lost and despair flooded me watching her die the way I watched my sweet husband take his last breath in my arms. How could this God be so cruel. Why does he take the lives of the good and inocent.

I am wondering as you are "DOES GOD HATE ME"

Grace

ONLY YOU

7/1/38 -10/20/04

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My dear Grace,

We are all so very, very sorry to learn of the sudden death of your dear little poodle over the weekend. Even though we have no explanations, no solutions, no answers, and no cures, most certainly we share in your pain, and we are touching your wounds with gentle and tender hands.

I share the following thoughts and words (selected from my site's Comfort for Grieving Hearts page) in hopes that (as the saying goes) you will "take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away":

I am a parent twice bereaved.

In one thirteen-month period

I lost my oldest son to suicide and my youngest son to leukemia.

Grief has taught me many things about the fragility of life

and the finality of death.

To lose that which means the most to us

is a lesson in helplessness and humility and survival.

After being stripped of any illusions of control I might have harbored,

I had to decide what questions were still worth asking.

I quickly realized that the most obvious ones --

Why my sons? Why me? --

were as pointless as they were inevitable.

Any appeal to fairness was absurd.

I was led by my fellow sufferers,

those I loved and those who had also endured irredeemable losses,

to find reasons to go on.

Like all who mourn

I learned an abiding hatred for the word "closure,"

with its comforting implications

that grief is a time-limited process

from which we will all recover.

The idea that I could reach a point when I would no longer miss my children

was obscene to me and I dismissed it.

I had to accept the reality that I would never be the same person,

that some part of my heart, perhaps the best part,

had been cut out and buried with my sons.

What was left?

Now there was a question worth contemplating.

-- Gordon Livingston, MD, in

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now

Coming to Terms with God

. . . Months ago I was angry at what I thought was

the sheeplike stupidity of people who believed

in a God who cared about them.

Enraged by Gretchen's death,

I could not understand how people,

especially those whose children had died,

could believe they were loved by God.

Having myself grown up with that image

of the fatherly taskmaster,

I needed something to blame,

something to hate for what had happened;

and there He was, still present in my memory,

somehow alive under layers of consciousness.

Shortly after Gretchen died

I saw a woman driving a car with a bumper sticker

saying GOD LOVES YOU,

and I felt like running her off the road.

I saw the same message the other day and shrugged.

Now that my anger is subsiding, I see Him and all the other gods

as not unlike my own "pathetic fallacies,"

the fantasies of minds and hearts unhinged by grief.

I may not believe what others do,

but I have experienced the desperate longing to understand,

and I know I, too, am one of the sheep.

So I don't begrudge anyone a belief

that can help them get through the day.

— Tom Crider, in Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage through Grief

. . . Vulnerability to death

is one of the given conditions of life.

We can't explain it

any more than we can explain life itself.

We can't control it,

or sometimes even postpone it.

All we can do is try to rise beyond the question,

"Why did it happen?"

and begin to ask the question,

"What do I do now that it has happened?"

-- Harold S. Kushner, in When Bad Things Happen to Good People

When we travel the journey of grief,

the familiar can become unfamiliar, even unrecognizable.

Relationships can be put on hold

(though sometimes because we don't recognize the love that surrounds us),

our bodies respond differently than before

(energy levels, appetite, sleep, general health)

and our emotions often become, at best,

a wild ride through some very dark and gloomy waters.

Even God (our beliefs, values and sources of strength) is different.

For some, even the ability to believe in anyone or anything

is stretched to impossibility, for a long time, maybe even forever.

Sorrow can be a very deep hole,

deepened by our perceived loss of that sense of connection.

For many it is about despair, fear and hopelessness.

For others, a sense of sadness and futility.

It may be less severe for many, but it is still there.

For all of us still wrestle with the essential questions of life and meaning.

Why did this happen?

Why did this happen now?

What will happen to me?

How will I live now?

Do I want to go on living?

What do I need to do now?

These are the questions of life and grief,

as old as the ancient psalms

and as fresh as this morning's first cup of coffee.

What does all of this mean for you and me?

The answer (and it isn't really an answer, but a choice, a hunch,

a moving through the journeys of grief and of faith

all twisted and turned together)

is in connecting to myself, my story and my God . . .

it is faith,

our ability to believe and trust

in the outcomes or blessings of even one's suffering,

that brings us through our sorrow to a renewed sense of hope.

My beliefs help me identify where I am,

who I am, where I am going, and how I will get there.

Healthy spirituality never dodges the tough bullets of grief.

It never diminishes my worth and never dismisses my feelings.

My relationship with God

leaves me plenty of time and space

to wander and to ponder.

There is room to be angry,

with the encouragement to receive anger's gift

rather than be seduced by its rage.

I can connect with my guilt,

yet welcome forgiveness that restores.

My loneliness is embraced through religious community or context,

ritual, sacrament and prayer (or whatever fits with your traditions).

Grief's anonymity ("Doesn't anyone understand?")

is embraced by a God

sometimes perceived to be distant and inaccessible,

who still knows me by name!

-- Reverend Richard Gilbert, M.Div. in "Like Connecting with an Old Friend"

Bereavement Magazine, January/February 2002

Reprinted with permission from Bereavement Publishing, Inc. (888-604-4673)

Wishing you peace and healing,

Marty T

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, I really should be more careful with what I say, I would hate to give anyone the idea that it is possible that God is punishing any of us or hates us...I know better. I know His character, I know Him very well, He isn't like that...it was just my feelings coming out...and as any of us knows, feelings are unreliable, they were created for a purpose, but that purpose was never meant to be a gauge of anything. Lately,well since George's death, my feelings have been unstable...up and down, I am normally pretty even-keeled, but nothing feels very even-keeled in my life anymore. I lost my cat, the one George and I raised from a little kitten together, he meant so much to me, and it felt like I lost a little more of George. I don't understand anything, I don't understand the "whys"...but then I also know better than to ask them. God is infinitely bigger than our minds can possibly grasp, His perspective so much more far-reaching...if He told us His reasons for allowing anything, it probably would be beyond our comprehension...and maybe we couldn't handle the answers. I do know that He acts in our best interest, even when we cannot see it. It does no good to tell someone that when their whole world is turned upsidedown and they're hurting, because it comes off sounding like another one of those well-meaning platitudes...yet I know it deep inside of myself, for I have spent my life with Him, and I know Him, and my faith is strong. And then too, sometimes things just happen, maybe there isn't any particular reason, it just happens. Some people believe everything is fate, but I don't, because we are free agents, our wills make a difference in our lives, so do our actions, and we have consequences that are sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Some people have willed themselves to live beyond what is normal for their circumstances. Some people have prayed and seen results to their requests...but all of our prayers are answered...just sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes wait...sometimes, "you don't know what you're asking for." I was praying when my George passed away...yet I don't feel God didn't hear me...I just think He had His reasons, and I feel George and I were perhaps spared something even worse...or perhaps he was granted a reprieve, even though it may have come at my expense/loss. Still, would I deprive him of that so that I could have him back because I want him so much? My heart cries out for him in utter agony, I miss him so much it is hard to bear, and yet, my answer is no, for I would have to do what was ultimately best for George, and not for myself...for we both loved each other with a selfless love that surpassed most human understanding. I am so sorry you lost your little dog, losses are tremendously hard, and it probably brings back all of the memories of the other losses you've suffered. There are some good books out..."Where is God When it Hurts?" and "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" that address some of these issues. I will pray for you to be comforted and for God to show you that He loves you, in a way that you can't miss it. It can't stay like this forever.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Kayc

Do not feel that anything you said made me lose faith, I am like you unsure of my feelings and beliefs these days. I guess because I had so many wonderful years with a very loving, caring man and losing him has caused me to wonder about Gods reasons why he takes some people. Losing my husband was the most terrible thing that has ever happened in my life and then to lose that poor little innocent puppy that didn't even have a chance at life was very unnerving for me. I never really ever thought about life without my husband, I thought we would grow old together and I ask God alot "Why did you take him from me" I try to think that God felt he had done all he needed to do in this life. Many times my husband used to say "all the things and places we moved in our life was for a purpose, so our kids could meet their future husbands and the future grandkids would be born and now that is done what does he have in store for us" Little did we know that after all that was done, there would be no us and God would take him. Those words he used to say are in my head while my heart is broken.

Please do not feel anything you said made me wonder about God, those feelings were already inside.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess all of this questioning is a part of our grief, but when all is said and done, I want to come through with my faith still strong and I want something to show for it...some deeper character, some form of ministry, something deeper, stronger...somehow. This roller coaster of emotions is very draining...it takes a lot out of me. My daughter noticed me wearing a pair of errings that are not symetrical...each one is different even though they are a set...I told her they are my midlife crisis errings...unbalanced, because that is kind of how I feel right now, even though I am definitely past midlife. This is not unlike it though, a time of questioning, searching for meaning and purpose.

My husband also said things to me that make me stop and think about them, such as, he never thought he'd make it to retirement...he didn't, he had 14 years to go. That is so sad to me...all the money I had him putting in to his retirement account...I wish to God now that I had just let him buy another tank of gas and more fishing lures with it! I feel real sad that we scrimped and saved for a future that we'd never have...it doesn't mean much to me to have that retirement some day...without him. It has lost its meaning...it seems like everything has. I try so hard and everyone thinks I'm doing great, but I don't feel like it, not when I am alone and have any time to think. I pray that God will take over and love us even when we are empty and drained, and His grace will carry us until He can do something in us that surpasses this emptiness and pain...and that's a tall order. Your missing your little dog is a lot how I am feeling about my Tigger...it is hard to understand, didn't we have enough loss? But how can I question what there may not be an answer for? I pray God will somehow bring balm to our souls, God knows we need it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...