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Raymond

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  1. Good Afternoon, I hope all is well, especially with the Holidays approaching. The grief I carry now is more akin to a pocket watch. It finds itself in my pocket everyday as I venture forth . . . always there, a gentle reminder. As with us all, every now and then a memory is delivered and I go about the business of placing one foot after the other as I carry the weight. Stronger now in the carrying of it. One hundred bricks rarely slows my pace now. My open wounds have healed, scarred, etched now as memories and only visible to the one's who know me best. My children were a tender age when my wife passed, eleven year old son and 13 year old daughter. I write now because -- as thick as my scars are -- I find traces . . . evidence of a new cut or an unhealed injury? They arrive whenever I look over to share my joy and sorrow at an achievement or misstep in my children's life path. I quickly think my children also are looking over . . . beside me. A brief stare, almost done out of reflex. Sometimes I address it with, "I wish mom were here to see this or help us". As each milestone arises, or lesson I impart on my own presents itself, a new cut is fashioned. New blood is shed. I see no end to this and I despair. Surely we all would bleed for our children but I am saddened so that this blood can only be shared with them and not for them. We bleed together now. My children are in many ways stronger than their father. Their resilience, as the cuts come, gives me strength and a reminder of how lucky we were to have the time we had with Susan. They now sometimes carry my water as their parents did for them. I struggle to find a way to take their pain into me but this is the nature of Grief. . . . He is selfish in this regard. I wonder now if my scars are really healed, forever festering or these are new wounds? . . . . new cuts that I'll have to endure . . .
  2. Doubt is cruel. Over 25 years ago I met and fell in love for the first time in my life. Up until that time I had my share of fun but with little fanfare and certainly no broken hearts left behind. Sadly, I lost my wife, best friend and mother to my children two years ago. There was a terminal diagnosis a year before that. 25 years of bliss. I fell in love with her many times over that period. I loved her like young lovers do. Research is part of my trade. I know more about cancer than I'll ever want to know. I know more about grief than I'll ever want to know. I know more about the pitfalls of dating a widower as I didn't want to subject any possible paramour to an unfairness. I remember being lucky enough to sit with a world famous grief counselor with the intent to make sure I was modeling my grief correctly for my two children. After two sessions he explained that I was not a good candidate for counseling as I already had the insight of the pain I was in and more importantly there wasn't much to do but sit in it. He thanked me but I never thought to ask what for. After dating others previously, I find myself with a woman I have great affection for. It has roughly been 6 months seeing her. I have told her I love her. I've told her I like the way she makes me feel when I am with her. My actions speak to this effect as well. But there seems to be a catch. I tried to explain that I'm not sure what love is to me. I know that comparisons to my previous love are a misnomer and a trap (as my research informs me). I tell her this love is a different love, and knowing my past, she accepts this. She knows my heart has room for two. I have been to the top of the mountain and the view was pure magic. I have a different view now . . . different magic. This is the backdrop for my pondering: Can a young man of 23 have the same type of love that a man of 50 can have? What is the difference between compromise and settling? I know intellectually I will never have exactly what I had, does that mean I am forever cursed to look for it? Is it settling if I don't find it? Never content with a different love? Tis maddening for sure this doubt. I so desperately want this love to be the same as it was knowing that it cannot be. Circular . . . . I hear people say you can feel it in your gut. Or I read you'll know it when it comes but I don't buy it. My head and heart have been tempered by Life's years and I don't remember what my gut felt like back then. Is it correct to interpret love as I am now compared to when I was 23? Doubt is a cruel thing. Does it mean I have not fully separated the "me" from the "we" yet? Is doubt in and of itself my answer to whether I am prepared to launch into love again? Is it a compromise to understand and be satisfied with a different love? Is it fair to her? -- widower's doubt
  3. Why? Hard to say. Mayhap the question Why not? What wouldn't you do for another glimpse of a smile? What wouldn't you do for another taste of a kiss? What wouldn't you do to hear the voice? What wouldn't you do to feel the warmth of an embrace. What wouldn't you do to catch a scent drifting around? Memories get delivered many ways. Some we choose, some not. Take comfort these are memories you have plucked off the shelf to peer at. Reminders . . . . always reminders. Please do not fear these. Life's greatest treasures lay on the other side of fear I have found.
  4. Good evening KrypticKat, I hope all is as well as it can be. Grief must be fed. Regrets and guilt from backwards. Anxiety and fears from forward. When you are present you feel alone. Indeed you are in Grief's shadow. I would ask you not to think of it as a journey with a beginning and end but rather a weight you carry. You will get stronger in the carrying of it . . . and you are. There is movement. That implies purpose. That implies -- dare I say it -- hope. From hope joy eventually finds it way into the little crevices where slivers of light are not blotted out by the shadow. This is how life catches and you begin to grow. You will amaze yourself at how strong you will become from carrying the weight. As time passes it shall become like a locket you wear or mayhap a ribbon. Always there . . . a symbol of all the knowledge and experience you have gained from your loved one and his passing. Yes, in a way you are alone. You must carry the weight to become stronger. However, you must allow those who love you to carry you. Let them carry your water.
  5. Good Morning, I hope all is well. It’s a year today, September 21, 2017. Susan passed gently into the early morning hours -- the silent time. Revelers usually down from the past evening and the early birds not quite yet roused . . . around 3 a.m. I sit here typing my thoughts and some whip through my mind leaving only downed branches of thought, scattered and incomplete. For me, there seems to be two types of love. There is a living love. And there is one after that person is no longer in your sphere – whether through death or otherwise. A living love is nourished and strengthened every day as you enfold your arms around what life has placed along your path that day, week, month . . . year. A love that is fueled by all your senses. The taste of a kiss, the touch of an embrace, the smell of her hair, the sight of her sleeping so gently and the sound her laughter. This love is a powerful magnificent thing. I was lucky, I believe, to understand it at the beginnings with Susan. I was lucky enough to understand it was a thing that was to be handled so preciously despite its unbreakable nature. I was lucky enough to understand I would do anything to feed it, grow it and surround myself in it. Is it not the breath of life? Like living in that moment of first holding your child? The power and size of it unfathomable. If I’m honest a small spot in the back of my mind always thought a thing such as this is not meant to last. It burns so bright, like a candle lit at both ends. Susan and I were both lucky enough to understand we held something very rare and we treated it as the breath of life. Like your only source of water, like the precious seeds you would harvest after each growing season….we would let nothing contaminate it, stunt it, influence it’s growth. And here lies the difference between a living love and it’s other. The process of sustaining a living love instinctually still remains after Susan has left but the fruit of my labor as harvested through my senses will never again be realized. A perennial flower no longer will bloom. This is my dynamic in grief. Instinctually we still keep sharp the ability of our living love’s labors – our gardening skills, so to speak -- but yet at what purpose? It is circular and maddening when in the throes of grief. Eventually, all the nourishment and the energy received from a living love is used up leaving you with a beautiful, glorious and magnetic thing . . . . a memory. Millions of memories, a warehouse full of jewels. A wealth beyond imagining that can never be spent or used to fuel the living love. Rather it is the food of the other love. We can survive on memories but it is just that . . . survival. It is not life lived, ever changing, growing, learning. But there is a danger with the food of this other love. Initially, it does sustain. Initially, you tend the garden instinctually of that of a living love. Believing the jeweled memories are enough to sustain you forever. For the older it does I suppose. To browse through a lifetime of memories. Their stockpiles from the harvest of the living love so large they would never run out. They have but to pluck a jewel off the shelf and gaze at it awhile to pass the time. Lovely. Everyone’s stockpile is different. Grief is unique to us all for that reason. The process of grief is living off the stockpile of love you have harvested during your living love until it is gone. Then you have to decide to find a precious source of water again so you can begin planting and using the gardening skills learned through a living love. To bank the fruit derived from taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. To begin building the stockpiles again. Lately, I wish there was an easy way to determine if my harvest is gone. I wish I could look into the barn and see nothing remaining as a sign to pack up and look for a new well. For now though, I am enchanted by the emeralds, rubies, diamonds, pearls, sapphires . . . .
  6. Good Afternoon, approaching a year here shortly. Jen, grief is an echo of ourselves. Unique to each of us. Incapable of comparison for this reason. Your love for Jim forever sings in your heart. So it must be. Mayhap a new song will come along . . . . mayhap not. I've written before here that you don't have to die to stop living. A fog everyone here understands all to well. My grandmother, who passed at 99, always explained a problem shared is a problem halved. Keep sharing Jen . . . and I hope a melody will arrive. p.s. a kitten's purring is very melodic
  7. Good Morning Nicky, I hope all is well as it can be. I'm coming up to 6 months as well. His pain has ceased but ours continues. So it must be. When those memories, of which you speak, knock on your door, you must let them in. Sit at the table with them. At this juncture, they require an audience. Dive into the pain and agony of those moments as the physical body requires this, at least mine does. I have a trick I do, when the sharp pain, crying etc. . . subsides, I remember a silly memory where we both belly laughed. (I couldn't remember any initially after her death, as you can relate, and truthfully I use the same one, as I still find it difficult to remember the thousands of millions that exist in our 25 years together. Mayhap a bit sophomoric, but the memory involves her tooting at the most inappropriate time -- I'm chuckling now, as I write, thinking of it). Then her pain, my pain and our pain morphs into something else. Hard to describe this feeling, but it calms me and I find it very uplifting. It is as if, for those brief moments when the funny memory kicks in, there is no past or future, only that moment that is relived in my current present. As I've stated earlier on this site, as terrible and gut wrenching the pain is when the memory knocks, I've come to welcome him in as I know that when he leaves I will be reassured of the vastness of the love. Grief is unique and so is its path that we walk with it. I hope my "trick" is helpful.
  8. I took my ring off very early on but not for reasons of moving on/forward etc. . . . but rather I placed it in a box next to hers. I felt the one should keep the other company. I still twirl the air above my ring finger. It is sort of feeling a limb or extremity that has been cut off. I still feel it on my finger. Funny, I just caught myself doing it as I was typing. Such is the way of it.
  9. Welcome. With children that young modeling your grief is paramount. The razor's edge. To lose yourself in the grief too much will frighten them. To remain "strong" and muster through will disallow them the opportunity to grieve. Seems cliche, but find a third party to help in this regard. Sometimes it might be family and sometimes it might be a stranger. Your children will want to carry your water and you must let them up to a point. Then you must carry there's up to a point. So this will go on until there is balance and you are all stronger in the carrying of it. Lots of tears . . . . children stand at the top of the motivation tree. This is what I've found, so far, four months out under very similar circumstances as yours.
  10. Yes, grief is our own and so must be unique. And words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light -- Goethe, Faust. However, language is the dress of thought -- Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets
  11. Good Morning Beth, I hope all is as well as it can be . . . Your heart is heavy. But in life we must experience pain to appreciate the joy. You lived, laughed and cried for a time and everything you touch, see, hear, taste and smell sparks a memory. This is as it must be. To give love is a terrible thing for it allows its recipient to leave your heart shattered in pieces, puddled on the floor. But what is life without love? It helps me, when one of those "memories" gets delivered unexpectedly, that has the pain gripping you to squeeze back even tighter. Remind yourself that the greatness of your pain is a reflection of the greatness of your love. I'm at the point (three months last week) that when the pain comes it is a reaffirmation of my love. My pain reminds me now of my love and though I can't say I welcome it, when it passes it leaves me with a bit of a smile. (I am not sure if this is healthy, honestly). But it works for me now, later? Who knows. Ask yourself, What would it say about my love if I didn't feel this pain? Finally, I'll echo what I've read -- Breathe and communicate . . . you are doing both, consequently whether you know it now or not, feel it or not, understand it or not, you are getting stronger every day in the carrying of your grief.
  12. Good Morning, I hope all is well. Newgirl, I could not have stated it any better. There are no answers only the searching. I think a synonym of grief should be a question mark? And you did snap me out of the doldrums for a minute to read and respond. Cheers! I was puzzled in your response, is keeping the "locket" to mean that grief hasn't went away? No matter really, curious I guess. I'm thinking it is better described as something else? Something warm, cozy and colorful? I have befriended the pain I feel as it reminds me of the love. I desperately hold on to it (the lizard part of my brain I should think) for fear that to lose the pain will diminish the love. The right side of my brain sees this as circular, inefficient, leading to an unhealthy place. Mayhap you could speak to the issue of what you would call, define or label "grief" where you sit? Thanks for the support you bring to this, "a problem shared is a problem halved" my grandmother always said. Happy Holidays
  13. Good Afternoon Newgirl, I liked your post. It speaks to the power of time. However, one must be careful not to characterize grief in linear fashion. Grief is like being in space -- no up, down, left, right, forward or back. For me, it is not a journey that has an end. Your strength drips from your post. You have carried your loved one's water for so long it feels not like a burden -- not painful -- but rather like the weight of a pocket watch or a locket around your neck? The grief is still there, no? Some buckle under the weight, some are strong and carry the weight much easier (I think it is one of the cruelest things I've heard someone say to a widow that they were dating so early after their loved one's death) and some take a year or so to adjust to the carrying of it. Grief comes to sit with you on the bench, shortly thereafter, Time sits beside you as well. These two know each other well and converse as you sit together. After awhile Grief gets up to stretch his legs. Time taps you on the shoulder and introduces you to another acquaintance Hope. Grief comes back and you all sit for a spell. Grief is restless and leaves more than usual now and Hope stays longer than usual. One day Hope comes back and introduces you to another acquaintance, Joy. Time never leaves you on the bench all during this. Time stays. I think the trick is to make a friend of Time. Listen to him and learn for he will tell you that at some point he will leave as well.
  14. Good Morning MACC, I hope is all is well that can be. The single parent dynamic is one of those hidden caves we get to explore when traveling the road of grief. Very scary. Fear leads to many things -- Anger being right at the top of the list. Normal? Yes. It is only a failure if you do not learn from it. Often times we must fall into the hole to learn the lesson, tragically. You are not perfect and your flaws are a part of why you were, and are loved -- you must remember this. You must remember this . . . Breathe and communicate -- you have done both
  15. Thank you Beth. I am a writer in a fashion but the stuff I pen usually people don't want to read but have too. . Happy Birthday Susan -- I certainly hope our paths cross again. I miss you so, I reach for you . . . please guide me along my journey.
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