Grief seems to be a maze. A maze with different rooms in it. Loss, Pain, Sorrow, Guilt, Regret, Remorse, Anger, Self-Pity - to name just a few. You follow the paths. They inevitably take you to one of these rooms. If you keep avoiding that room, you never get to move on. Sometimes you go into one of the rooms and want to stay there. Anger is a great place - you can avoid feeling the pain and all the rest. Self pity is good too. Just crawl under the covers and escape life. There are also the happier rooms - Acceptance, Serenity, Gratitude, Strength and even Joy. They're a resting spot, a time out. But eventually they kick you out, because it's time to keep moving. There's the avoidance rooms - Busyness, Denial, Rationalization. If you want to stay in them, you have to keep slamming shut the door that leads out. Sometimes you think you're done with a room. You've explored it, found the door out and moved on. And then you move through the maze and it leads you back.
My husband of 16 years (well, we weren't technically married for that, but spiritually we were) died just over 8 months ago. You'd think the grief would be easier by now, but it's not. It is different. I feel like I'm moving through the maze, but it's getting progressively deeper and more real. At first, it all seemed surreal, with periods of "Oh my God, it's real". All my energy went into keeping my head above water. Sometimes just breathing was a challenge. I've kept moving through the maze. But right now, I feel like I'm bouncing between the Sorrow room and the Guilt, Regret, Remorse rooms.
We had an amazing relationship for 13 years. We used to joke that we were the same person in male and female forms. Most of our difficulties were his man/logic view vs. my female/emotional view. And for 13 years we were able to find our way with lots of love. Which was especially amazing since we were together 24/7. We were not only married, but business partners working together. We were soul mates. And then something happened. I'm not sure what exactly. I had health issues and because of them started doing some emotional/spiritual growth and changes. And since I was new to it, I didn't do it very well. I made a lot of mistakes. Business was tough and we were traveling a lot - so there was a lot of stress on both of us. But we'd been through those challenges before and were able to tackle it together. And I just have to wonder if that's when the diabetes (which eventually led to his death) kicked in. Because he became much more irritable and the connections we had began to strain until neither of us had the energy to make our marriage work. So there we were on the precipice of divorce and then he died.
At this point, I feel like I'm grieving the end of the marriage as well as his death. It's a double whammy. Lately I've had memories of the good times. And realizations of how much he brought to my life, how many things he did for me. I was sick recently. When I got to the store to get my prescription filled, I just sat in my car and sobbed. I felt so miserable and all I could think was "If Jim was here, he'd get my prescription for me. He knew what I could eat and what food would make me happy. He'd take care of me." And all I wanted to do was call him, tell him how sorry I was for being unappreciative for the wonderful things he did for me. But he's dead and I can't. People want to make me feel better and tell me that I can tell him. I just want to scream. HE'S DEAD!!!!! I know they mean well. But I can't call him. I can't talk to HIM. I can't make amends. Maybe I can, but it's not the same. I can't wrap my arms around him, I'm sorry, tell him he's a wonderful human being, maybe heal some of the pain I caused him. I can tell the air. And sometimes I do feel him, hear him. The other night I saw a fireball and I knew it was him. But most of the time, there's just an empty space where he used to be.
So I'll just keep moving around the maze.
