the real meaning of grief

[sandrine2279]

Hi

 

Since one month I can tell I know what grief really is. losing the only man I have ever really loved and with whom I was doing my whole life. so unfair for him (he is 32 years old)....

So what about the grief I thought I felt before?

a break up? being rejected by someone? what about all these songs I listened about people saying they could die because of a love affair and so on....

pepole in my country  crying because water went into their  house, waiting for the insurances to pay for their damaged goods?

my beloved bear's friends saying they "keep strongs" and think of him going to the cinemas as they used to do with him  before ?! only three weeks after they were crying out loud at the cemetary... louder than me who couldn't  cry ....!

maybe I am not able to feel the grief of other people but... 

come on .... in fact I did knew nothing about grief and I wish it could be the same today.

I just needed to write it here...

hugs

sandrine

 

 

 

 

[BrokenHeart2]

Well said Sandrine.  I wish it could be the same today too. 

Hugs to you.

 

[SoVerySad]

Sandrine, This type of grief is definitely unlike any other. I don't think someone who hasn't experienced it can imagine the enormity of the depth and all the ways one is affected by it. I wish all of us could go back to not having a personal understanding. Since we can't, I hope it gives you some measure of comfort to at least know we understand here and appreciate how difficult it is.

 

It is true that life for everyone around us seems to go so quickly back to normal, while it is hard for us to grasp how the world continues on at all without our loves.

 

Sending you tight hugs...

[AubreeAnn]

I can relate. It seems as if people that were grieving with you, are now moving on and doing things that they enjoy. While us on the other hand, feel a strong whip of pain at the slightest thing that we do that we once did with our loved one, or makes us think of them. It's kind of hard to see others not in as bad of shape as we are. Don't those people know what they lost? Why aren't they hurting as bad? Didn't he mean as much to them as he did to me? Those are the thought I've had as well when I see people doing things they enjoy now, that were grieving like me. But I do try to think that, the relationship I had with my love wasn't anything that anyone else could relate to or know the intensity of, that's why this grief is our own. The relationship with a spouse is incomparable to any other relationship and that's why it's easier for others to move forward with the loss. Not that those people don't miss or ache for the person who is gone, they just don't have the same intensity of loss that we do. This is something that I have struggled with too and you are not alone. Focus on yourself and your own grieving. You have to take care of yourself first, try not to focus on others yet. Hugs.

[Guest TooSoon]

Sandrine, 

 

The learning curve is a steep one with grief.  There are so many things I wish I had known then that I've learned since but something tells me they can only be learned by living through them.  The first lesson I learned is that everyone's grief manifests in its own uniquely personal way - the way my Father in Law grieved his son was different from my own grief, as with everyone else who loved and cared about Scott.  His childhood friends took it very hard and couldn't deal with me at all.  At first I was hurt, but over time I came to realize they needed to keep him and their memories of him in a time and a place that existed long before I ever came on the scene.  Over time, I learned to be very accepting of others' ways of coping and over time I have grown to appreciate the perspective of a loss so profound. 

 

For you now, however, your loss is so recent, so raw.  Give yourself permission to feel however you feel and when you have what seem like angry or irrational thoughts, bring them here because you will find that every single one of us has felt them at one time or another, too. 

 

The other really important thing I learned is that my own grief was like a speeding train, off the rails, on its own course.  I wanted very much for my own self-imposed benchmarks (held memorial, passed six months, etc.) to rein it in, put on the brakes, but it never worked that way.  When grief wasn't like a speeding train, time seemed to drag on interminably until I was so sick of my own company and of the constant cycle of grief that I just wanted to get in bed and wake up when it was all over.  It took me a long time to realize that my pain was going to come and go, ebb and flow, on its own schedule, and my only choice was to let it happen and take it as it came and then went, and over time it softened.  Fighting it got me nowhere fast. 

 

Sending you so much support and understanding. 

 

 

[donswife]

well said Sandrine

its like a grief that you could never have imagined

but everyone here understands

My heart goes out to you

take care

[WifeLess]

Sandrine2279,

 

Welcome to Young Widow Forum.

 

Perhaps the best description I have read of the grief associated with the early months of widowhood can be found in "Letter To A Friend". I just bumped it up in the Newly Widowed section. Here is a link to it:

 

http://widda.org/index.php/topic,7.0.html

 

Sorry for your loss.

 

--- WifeLess

 

[lovelorne]

This type of grief is definitely unlike any other. I don't think someone who hasn't experienced it can imagine the enormity of the depth and all the ways one is affected by it.

 

Well said, and I'll add something my late husband once told me:

 

Once a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can never be a cucumber again..

 

Once you join this club, you can never un-join.  My husband has been gone almost 5 years, I've been in a good relationship for nearly 4 years, and I still miss my husband.  It's not nearly as hard as it once was, but it still sucks.