Dear Larry:

Grief is an all-encompassing thing.   It was like by brain was turned off and I was functioning just on emotions.  My emotions were out of control, and I felt like I was attempting to operate in some foreign body.  It is an experience so personal and unique that there is no way to communicate how overwhelming grief can be.  Compound losing my husband to the nonsense being served up by the people in the family who heaped on more grief and, suffice to say, I was spinning out of control with no safety net in sight. 

I realized that I had never lived alone.  This was my first experience of living in a house—-OUR house—-alone and not really wanting this.  The silence was a killer.  I was accustomed to conversations and another person moving around in the house.  Now, ever a bird chirping outside startled me. 

“Getting over this” seemed to be a ridiculous theory.  How does a person “Get over” their spouse and 24/7 companion for 40 years?  You were the best man I ever knew and there was not a soul on this earth who I wanted to share my life with other than you.  I understood loud and clear that you were not coming back, and I needed to find at least a way to cope with your absence knowing full well that I would never dishonor you by “getting over it”.

I tried medical options.  I went to church more.  I read and researched looking for a “cure” for the sorrow around losing you.  It does not exist.  I kept spinning and those around me kept piling it on until I felt like I was going to snap.  I prayed for help from God because He took you from me.

I decided to push myself beyond the doors of the house and volunteered for a find raising event.  During this, I discovered that this organization offered a group grief session for those mourning loved ones.  I called our dear friend and asked if he would like to join me as he was agonized by your death also.  What the heck?  I had tried everything else so there was nothing to lose.  The next Tuesday at noon, we attended our first session and continued for over a year.

As these sessions went on, I listened to the other participants who lost someone important.  The lady with the loss of her dog was a bit of a stretch, but grief is grief.  The facilitators presented poignant questions to provoke conversation.   People shared about the loss of their spouse, child, parent, friend and the dog.  The facilitator also used these sessions to have university psychology students sit in and observe.  On occasion, they contributed.  I sat.  I listened, I rarely spoke.

After a year of these weekly meetings, on the drive home I shared with my friend that I thought that I had heard everything there was to hear.  The cliches were gutting me.  I felt as if I was prodding through wet sand and moving slowly and with no purpose.  The effort was outweighing the reward and I was leaving these sessions crying and raw.  This certainly had not been the solution I was seeking and I was realizing that I might have been searching for unicorns—–a solution that really did not exist.

We went again the following Tuesday.  There was a new intern—-a 20 something kid.  She truly was a lovely and warm girl, but she was a girl with no experience in a long-term heterosexual relationship.  She had no way to connect with the widowed people in that room sharing the trauma of the loss of a spouse.  The session began.

After all of the sharing and updating, the young woman had a point she wanted to offer us.  She said that she was speaking particularly to the women who had lost their husbands.  She pointed out that most of us had spent our lives taking care of a house, children and our husbands.  We now had the opportunity to “find ourselves” and identify who we are as individuals, to be ME, not just a wife.

My friend reached over and grabbed my hand.  The facilitator looked at me with terror in her eyes.  I felt my blood rushing to my head and I probably turned beet red.  More than anything, I wanted to bolt out of the room before I said something that I might regret.  The facilitator looked at me and asked if there was anything I wanted to share.  I said, “No”, but she knew different.  The session ended and we hurriedly left the room.  When we got into the car, my friend looked over at me and said, “You are done, aren’t you?”  My response, “Yep”.

I was so angry and hurt.  I wanted to scream out and I am certain the other widowed women were thinking the same thing.  We don’t need the advice of a 20-year-old kid with no concept of the depth of a marriage to give us this advice.  I know who I am!  I discovered this with my husband at my side supporting me.  I do not want to be ME…..I want to be WE!  Being his WIFE is what I want to be.  That is why we are here!  Me is lonely and alone.  WE is warm and comforting…..we refuse to surrender the WE that we were for so many years.  The agony comes when we realize that ME is all that there is and it is the last thing that any of us ever wanted. 

There is no doubt that this young woman had the best of intentions and threw out suggestions based on her personal history.  Sadly, it seemed to do more damage than she could have ever anticipated.

I never went back.

Forever with you as WE

P