5 years

[Trying]

Today marks 5 years since my life was forever changed.  Time is a strange thing.  There are days in which I feel I have had a lifetime worth of experiences, struggles, and changes since he died.  Other days it seems like just yesterday.  

The anticipation of the anniversary this year has been less painful and unbelievably I haven't experienced the reliving of his final weeks in agonizing detail like years past.  It has been a more reflective time for me and I have been working on allowing myself to focus on gratitude for the years we had together.

 

I was doing so well not reliving the agonizing early grief...then last night my current DH came home and told me his 47 year old cousin dropped dead yesterday in his home with his wife and 2 small children in the other room.  His grief and his empathy for the wife and children is so raw and was mixed with his apologies to me for expressing his grief to me at this time of year.  5 years later I am able to focus on his grief today and not make it about me.  The difference of course is when everyone is saying "I can't imagine what they are going through", I don't need to imagine it, I've lived it.

 

My day will go on as planned while this family 3 hours away faces their darkest days.  I will go to work this morning, go for a Massage  this afternoon,  make a presentation to my professional networking group about the therapeutic benefits of touch for cancer patients, caregivers and widow/ers, then take our 3 boys out to dinner at the restaurant that they loved to go to with their Dad.  

[Wheelerswife]

Xoxo to you, my old colleague. Saturday is 9 years for my first husband and it seems to be biting worse than last year. I’m glad you are in this better place for yourself today. My condolences to your husband and his family...

 

Maureen

[Julester3]

Hugs to you today. Thanks for sharing the perspective. 

[tybec]

OH, what a turn of a day!  Glad you are having an easier time this year.  But sad that you understand what the other family is dealing with. Hope your day goes as you hope. Massage and dinner with your sons.  Very nice plan.

[klim]

Hugs...weird life we live eh?!?

 

 

[Abitlost]

Strange how life works, isn't it? I, too, have a softening of the predictable grief days and no longer experience them by the hour as if in real time. It seems as life goes on and more people experience what we have been prematurely living for years, it can come flooding back. We sit in the unenviable position of having experience of knowing what those joining the widow club are going through, while knowing that our lives go on pretty much as it had been. Life can just be sad and hard to digest.