Losing While Loving
The more I am around other people who have lost their spouse, the more I understand how unbearable it is. I always think it’s unbearable to me because it is. But sometimes I tell myself to get over it, that it happens all the time and people move on to different parts of their lives. Jackie got over JFK and married that old Greek guy and reinvented herself as Jackie Onassis. Why not the rest of us? Then I realize just exactly what it is that we are up against and it becomes so obvious why everything after loss is so difficult.The word “loss” is used so much I wonder if we sometimes need to be reminded of its meaning. It is a little word with devastating significance. “Loss” can be defined as “the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had” or “deprivation from failure to keep.” Or, there’s this, “the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed.” Those are very dark, sad and foreboding descriptions of the word we have experienced. No wonder we feel like shit so much of the time.
In my opinion, and I have stated it before, there is no greater loss than the that of a spouse. Period. I should qualify that by adding “assuming you are still in love with your spouse when he/she dies.” Under the circumstances of losing while loving, there is no greater pain in the world. Nothing more unbearable. How can anyone be expected to lose the one person they trust with their entire being, their whole existence? To have them taken from us, to be deprived of something we once had. It is so hard to explain the emptiness created, the vacancy in our hearts that aches with each breath we take. I can’t speak for everyone, but I sometimes get an almost claustrophobic feeling, a sense of panic, when I face the reality that I will never see my wife again. I have to sit up or somehow change my position, take a few deep breaths and maybe drink some water to get past those momentary fits of anxiety. When my mother died, my daughter explained her death to her 4-year-old daughter partly by saying, “We’re not going to see Grandma Jean anymore.” I’m not going to see my wife anymore and neither are all the other people who lost their wife or husband. We’re not going to see them anymore yet we are in love with them still. Very cruel, very harsh and very painful realities to face. So difficult, it sometimes seems an impossible task.
How do we deal with this? Where do we take our relief? Some of us have tremendous support systems surrounding us with life lines and compassion in every direction. Some of us have very little of that. But even with the most supportive of support systems, unless a person has experienced the exact tragedy of losing a spouse while still in love, they will not completely understand the cavity we have in our heart. They will never quite get why we feel the way we feel and why we cry the way we cry.
I am one of the lucky survivors with one of those tremendous support systems. My children are wonderful as are some very special new friends I have made. Some of the people I thought would have been more supportive have kept their distance and I understand that. Some of them are dealing with their own loss of the same person, some of them aren’t comfortable talking to me about my situation and feel better staying away. Others probably figure I should be over my loss by now and everything should be returning to normal. But the ones who know me best are the ones who share my loss. The men and women who are “without something they once had” are the people who understand me best. They know what I’m talking about when I talk about missing intimacy and I know exactly how they feel when they talk about being suddenly alone. There is a unique bond between people who otherwise might have nothing else in common. And that bond is all about understanding, listening, hearing, sharing, and healing together.
I am in a spouses support group and have heard stories and felt the emotions of others like me. We are from different areas and generations but we are all in the same boat going upstream without any paddles. We are all in the fight of our lives and we have all lost while being in love. Of all the places I have been and all the people I have talked to since I have become a surviving spouse, that group might be the most healing. I did not know any of these people before but after only a few weeks of meeting for 90 minutes, I feel like we are kind of family. It’s funny how these people know me better in this role than some of my friends and family do. I say things to them i don’t say to other people. They never knew my wife, never saw our love for each other, but they didn’t have to. They had the same thing I had just by a different name. And now they are searching for ways to get relief from “the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed.” The experience of losing while loving.
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