Heart Of Grief

The Heart Of Grief

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Not knowing how to continue loving you brings me great anguish and pain. Naturally I want you, the one person who I loved more than anything in the whole world, to be with me still. The worst agony of intense grief comes when I realize that your return, what I want more than anything, is the one thing I can not have. I feel like I'm in the darkest place that I've ever been in my life and the only light I can imagine is one I'll never see. I hurt so terribly because I want what can not be, yet I still continue to want it.
Confusion....I don't know what is right or what is normal....what should I do? Sometimes our holding on to the past or those who have died is obsessive, preoccupying, or excessive. Where do you draw the line? When do you grieve and 'get it all out' and when do you put it behind you and move forward. We're (us grievers) told to acknowledge the pain and not sweep it aside or it rears its ugly head in other ways, yet we're told not to obsess over it. So what is the fine line? How much is too much? How much is too less? I'm confused and I don't know if it's normal for me to keep crying off and on all day. I don't know if it's normal to have all these intrusive memories and thoughts of you all throughout the day. I don't know if it's normal to want to die so I can be with you sooner. I know you can't come back to me, but I can come to you. What is normal? I feel like I am far from it!
Painful reminders and the hurt that overwhelms me adds distance not only from what triggers pain but also from what rouses cherished memories and feelings of connection. My tears cloud my memories.
The world changed irretrievably when you died.

"Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had ----- for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on, through habit, fitting an arrow to the string; then I remember and have to lay the bow down." C.S. Lewis

"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape. As I've already noted, not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn't a circular trench. But it isn't. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn't repeat." C.S. Lewis

There are shattering effects of losing you: the anguish of longing for an impossible return. My broken heart, my homesick soul, my grounded spirit. New encounters with this world transformed by loss. Daunting challenges. Wrestling with the great mysteries of life, death, and suffering. Learning to carry pain. Finding the courage to go on living without you by my side. Struggling to feel at home again in my physical surroundings, with fellow survivors, and in the greater scheme of things. Reshaping my daily life. Redirecting my life story. Changing myself. Reviving my soul and spirit.

PERHAPS LOVE - John Denver
(Placido Domingo)
Perhaps love is like a resting place
A shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort
It is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble
When you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home

(John Denver)
Perhaps love is like a window
Perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer
It wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself
And don't know what to do
The memory of love will see you through

(Placido Domingo)
Oh, Love to some is like a cloud
To some as strong as steel

(John Denver)
For some a way of living
For some a way to feel

(Placido Domingo)
And some say love is holding on
And some say letting go
And some say love is everything
And some say they don't know

(John starts joined by Placido)
Perhaps love is like the ocean
Full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it's cold outside
Thunder when it rains
If I should live forever
And all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

(Placido Domingo)
And some say love is holding on
And some say letting go

(John Denver)
And some say love is everything
Some say they don't know

(John starts joined by Placido)
Perhaps love is like the ocean
Full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it's cold outside
Or thunder when it rains
If I should live forever
And all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

I talked to your mom today. I told her I was getting your/our wedding ring cleaned (Fred Meyers in -------). She was happy to hear I still wear it. She considers us married. I'm happy to hear that. Someone who understands my commitment to you still and doesn't question it. I love your mom, I really do.
My feelings, desires, motivations, habits, dispositions, expectations, and hopes aim in the same direction as before. It's as if my love for you is suspended in midair with no place to land. Your absence frustrates me constantly. I lived as if you would always be here, adjusting to life without you does not seem normal. Does not seem right. You're supposed to be here. We planned for a future. I am slow to realize that my daily life can never be as it was. I will no longer see and be seen, hear and be heard, touch or be touched, or hold or be held by you. Nor will share our house or a view, converse, laugh or cry, walk or dance, hope or plan. I will not grow you as you grow older. We were suppose to grow old together and be one of those 80 year old couples still holding hands! You will not know me as I grow older. I will no longer be a part of your dreams, joys, sorrows, your successes or failures. Nor will you be a part of mine. My 'biography' has veered from its expected course. I am powerless to connect to you, the one I love, in my usual ways. I am repeatedly caught up short by my reality transformed by loss.
When I lost you, your absence spread like dense clouds over my life. There is a bitterness in this deprivation that seems to shadow all that I do. My everyday life is clouded with sadness, loneliness, longing, frustration, anger, disorientation, confusion, anxiety, fear, hopelessness and helplessness. I am daunted by the challenge to reshape my daily life. I'm struggling now to write the next chapter in my life and find my way again in this new world.
When you died, I lost your physical presence and all it meant to me. I lost the fulfillment of my desires, expectations, and hopes that were centered on you, centered on us. I still carry it within me. I've lost my abilities to interact daily and to continue into the future as your/our habits, dispositions, and motivations still incline me. I begin the rest of my life without you, ready to go on as if you were still here. But I can not, try as I might. I feel stagnant. I feel like I don't know what's next. I don't know where to turn. I don't know what move to make next. I can't make a decision. My life is at a standstill. In losing you, I've lost the possibility of going on as I would have had you lived.
I wish others would not dismiss or underestimate the significance of another's presence. Presence is one of the most precious things we can give to one another. We sometimes learn most poignantly just how precious presence is when we lose someone. I simply cannot have things as they were before your death intervened. Momentous change has altered permanently the world we experienced. Our familiar life patterns are irretrievable. My heart aches with a kind of homesickness.
I do believe reunion will come in another life, yet this is certain: in this life I know separation is tangible and will last as long as I survive. Hence, my longing for my own death. The sooner I leave this life, the sooner I can be reunited with you. After losing you, I was acutely aware that I was in a strange place that's far from bringing me value, meaning and hope in my life. A strange place distant consolation and comfort.
Sometimes this pain of separation is excrutiating, almost dehabilitating. One of the worst aspects of this experience of pain is the fear of what we do not know. Hurt permeates every waking moment moment and casts the world around us in darkness. Virtually all my physical and social surroundings and daily routines arouse pain and anguish. These emotions hold center stage, no matter where I turn. I often feel desperate and tortured by the least little thing. Sometimes my pain and anguish are so preoccupying that it seems I am nothing but the hurt that I feel. No wonder I fear there will be no end to it. No wonder hopelessness permeates my soul.
There are always painful meetings with people, places, situations and things. I visit places half forgotten until I'm there and the memories come flooding back. I find myself in spots where I had expected or hoped to go with you. I am sometimes surprised by objects or memories that surface unexpectedly that remind me of you. I hear music we once shared, I see a picture, I hear a familiar story or visit a familiar place that takes me back in time. I meet or hear from those who knew you. I recognize something of you in another. I see something we had in others around me. Some of these memories arouse powerfully intense pain and agony.
Hurt is my companion. It accompanies any joy and happiness that I find. I laugh and I think you should be sharing this with me. I find pleasure in something little and I think you should be here. It saddens me that you can't share these newly treasured moments. If I have no one to share what do these moments really mean. Not a thing unless I can share them. This hurt and sadness will always occupy a space in my heart.
Reminders of you repeatedly penetrate any pretense that nothing has happened. This swallowed hurt corrodes me from within. The fear and helplessness are at the core of my suffering. I fear that this pain and anguish will be unending, my agony relentless. I feel like losing you has drained my life of all its vitality. Sometimes I anticipate an empty future. It's as if I lie immobile and exposed waiting for more dreadful things to happen. Every time the phone rings I think it's another call that I've lost someone else.
Memories flash through my head. Stupid memories. Jumping into your pickup together in Malaha. Sitting in your living room eating ice cream. Brushing your teeth. Nothing meaningful. But all meaningful.
I have seen the light and the dark in one flash.
I have had the blinders ripped from my eyes, I suddenly see the lies of my life and the truths of existence for what they are.
I feel crazy because your death has absolutely, vividly re-prioritized my life.
I feel so small in the shadow of such profound truth.
I'm trying to fit the very sane epiphany of grief into a world that would rather have me feel insane, so as to maintain a safe status quo.
After your death I've been suspended in limbo; I'm not the person I used to be, nor the person I was yet to become.....for mourning is the constant reawakening that things are now different.

LONGING FOR YOUR RETURN
In a bad way. So, so bad. I feel, act, think, expect and hope as if you are still with me. I hurt as I meet your absence over and over and over and over again. In public places, in intimate corners of my life. I long for the past or for your return so that these feelings, actions, thoughts, expectations and hopes might again find their target. Instead my arrows fly aimlessly hitting nothing. So many times I wish you were alive just at this moment so I could share it with you. It could be anything, a walk, a laugh, a nap, a movie, a story, an experience, a drive. I always wish you were here so I could share all my days and the rest of my life with you. This wishing is spontaneous, sometimes even unwelcome. It's sad to wish you were with me all the time when I know you can't be. It hurts me so bad. I want to cry at those moments because it's hopeless. I feel so deprived especially when I am around other couples who get to share it all.
Nostalgia is bitter because, even as I wish, I'm painfully aware that my wishes cannot come true. I can't go back to you by retreating to the past. Nor can I return you to life in the present. Sometimes there's no denying the reality of our separation. I just have no expectations, I long for nothing real now. I only want you and I can't. Unlike ordinary desires, the desire for your return cannot move me to do anything. There are simply no ways to satisfy that desire. Sometimes my longing is so intense and persisting that it immobilizes me. I feel paralyzed; unable to do anything. Hopeless and helpless and full of PAIN. I worry sometimes about my fervent desire. The recognition of your death just recedes into the background of my life. In a way I'm still in a denial. I hold on to my disposition to feel, act, think, expect, and hope that you are still alive. Sometimes I think your return is possible. Maybe you will pull up in the driveway, maybe you will appear out of the air into my living room, maybe I'll wake up and you'll be lying next to me, maybe I will see you at church, maybe I'll pass you on the highway, maybe that phone call is from you, maybe when I check my email there you'll be, maybe that message on my answering machine is from you, maybe I will see you flying on my next fire, maybe I will see you somewhere in ----- when I'm up there. I still buy cards for you on the holidays and monthly anniversary of your death, and cards just because I love you. All these are attempts to hold on to what I do not and cannot have. I can't bear to cut ties with you and stop doing these things. I want to hold on to you as long as I can. I don't want to let go. I can't, it hurts too much. I need you in my life. It seems no path can lead me to the life we once held, yet that's where I want to be sooo bad. It's like I choose the path of pretending you still live, though I can't find you over the less preferred path of anguish. Anguish of accepting that you can't be found. In the futile longing of your return, I tolerate the helplessness it entails. Yeah, it sucks but I prefer it to the intolerable permanence of your absence. This intense longing and desire fills my heart with pain and anguish.

Though lovers be lost love shall not. - Dylan Thomas