It’s been awhile. For those of you that were tagging along, I apologize, I’ve had so much to say, but hopefully if your back, your here because your still curious, and wanting to learn about the trials and tribulations of widowhood. So here we go.
It feels like I have been around the sun a hundred times between now and my last post. I have moved, twice. Sold my home that I most recently shared with Drew. Celebrated too many holidays, his birthday, my birthday, and hosted a memorial golf tournament on Drew’s behalf.
All of these events, have great impact. It’s a punch to the gut everytime I stop and think. This is because Drew died. It’s because Drew died that I’ve been growing caterpillars into butterfly’s in his memory, it’s because Drew died, that I live back in Kingston. It’s because Drew died that I am within a 10 minute walking distance to work, which I usually acknowledge by saying “ya it’s so great, I’m so close to work, a huge difference from driving back and forth to Perth.” Behind this facade of relief, or gratefulness that I live so close to work now, is a stifling twinge of anger I push down every time I say it. I will continue to say it, until it feels more true, because the truth is, it is nice to live close to work, it is a relief to not be driving back and forth from Perth to Kingston on a back country road. Cue the guilt. This is why grief is so confusing, and all encompassing. Just when you think you’ve rid yourself of a particular feeling, for instance guilt- it rears its head again, but with different meaning, different context. The old guilt ive come to know is the guilt carried directly related to Drew dying, and me feeling like I could have done something to prevent this. I have spent many many hours in therapy sifting through this guilt- and that’s not today’s news for the blog- but here we are, guilt popping through again, conjuring up a pit in my stomache, only to instigate my mind into spiraling into a dark, dingy hole that takes over.
The reason I share this is because I want to show how confusing it can be how emotions continuously bubble up, around the same event, but with so many layers. As humans we try to understand and give meaning to why something happened in hopes to move on and come to terms with the situation, and move forward. When you speak these words, it sounds like a simple concept. Understand what is making you feel guilty about ‘X’, take ‘Y’ and apply it to X, and then move onto the outcome which is Z, or something that your brain can get behind and move it out of the way. Cue the cliche lines ‘I’ve already learned from this’, or ‘my takeaways are…’ the important message for widows, or those managing intense grief, is that the emotions, the facts, the understanding- will never be that. There will never be an appropriate reason that Drew died. My brain will never be able to rationalize that Drew died, and it shouldn’t have too. I should not have to continuously re-examine and analyze my feelings and emotions and responses and try to tell myself It’s going to be okay, when I really don’t think it will be.
It’s not okay that Drew died, my person died, and he wasn’t supposed to. My person died and he was 31 years old. My person died, and I’m going to feel every emotion, over and over, and over, never being able to ‘come to terms’ with an emotions or ‘move forward.’
This is exhausting, it hurts and it feels lonely, but it’s OK. Just know it’s okay to not understand or be able to describe why you can’t shake an emotion or a feeling.. it’s because we’re not supposed to shake them, we’re supposed to embrace them, hold them tight, and move with them. Welcome to my life, Grief, we are going to be OK. We will figure out where to go from here together.
Xox