A Grief Observed ~ Part 1

 

I have been reading “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. Knowing that others have felt your pain and able to express it into words really helps. There are so many feelings and so many unknowns, it is hard to understand them all. Hopefully I can be as open and honest as Clive and be a help to those who are experiencing the same grief.

One big thing that surprised me in this valley I am in was also the same as C.S. says,

“At first I was afraid of going places where H. and I had been happy—our favorite pub, our favorite wood. . . . Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more empathetic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. I suppose that if one were forbidden all salt, one wouldn’t notice it much more in any one food than in another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. It is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky spreading over everything.”

And that’s the only way I can describe it as well. His absence changes everything.  A part of you is taken away, so you have to learn to live life with out it. It’s like losing your sight. Life is different from that point on. You’re still the same person but you have to learn to do things differently. It’s a disability: Grief. You might grow from it, you might learn from it, but it changes you and life will never be the same again.

There is fear that comes with this disability; Fears that has to be overcome. I can imagine that if I lost my sight, I would be afraid I would forget what things looked like, or people’s faces. That is the same fear I have in my loss. Will I forget his face? Will I forget the sound of his laugh or the look of determination when he is working on a project? I don’t want to forget, and I am so afraid that I will.

I am also afraid of moving on with this new life. I know I have to and I know I have no choice but accepting it and fighting through it means that it’s real. Its been 6 weeks since I’ve been without my other half and even though I said good bye,  I know I will have to move on. I visited family and kept myself busy enough that the moving on was put on the shelf. Now its here, and I have to face it except that everything in me is screaming that I can’t.

I don’t expect you to answer this, but how do I just move on? How do I move on when the roof over my head is apart of “our” home not “my” home? How do I move on when I wake up and the beautiful girl smiling at me looks more and more like her Daddy everyday? How do I move on when his clothes are hung up in the closet, his school bag is under the nightstand and the puzzle we started is still half completed on the fold out table? It’s like he’s just at work and I’m waiting for him to come home. And yet every night when I go to bed I realize in my heart, I already know it in my head, that its only me, and it will only be me.