I rarely post these days -but I often read others, usually in the wee hours when I wake and find sleep illusive. The raw grief expressed by so many echo my own posts and thoughts this time last year. It is now almost 18 months since I lost my wonderful, funny, talented husband and whilst I still miss him every day - it is no longer every minute of every day. Yes sometimes I do weep and think I always will but my tears are not the heart wrenching sobs of raw grief. There is still an ache that I live with - but no longer that intense pain that feels like you have been hollowed out. And I want to give hope to those of you that are recently bereaved that one day your tears will be mixed with smiles of precious memories.
The analogy of grief that it is like a ball in a box is true for me. In the early days the ball was huge and filled the box so full the grief button was depressed all the time - now time has shrunk the ball a bit and yes it sometimes hits the grief button - but there are days when it misses it.
Sometimes It is the smallest thing that tugs my heartstrings - today just putting on a pair of his socks under my boots and seeing the hole in one and hearing him comment !. The look in his eyes in one of my favourite photos - and of course the new year. Never a big celebration - just curled up on the sofa waiting for the children to call to wish us happy new year - me saying I am off to bed now and him saying I will have one more drink. Then me waking an hour later to trek downstairs and shake him awake and say come to bed. How many times have I done that - I pat the cushions now as if giving him a little shake and say - come on bed now love imagining him to be there.
I always knew from the first day of our romance that we were two halves of a whole and when I lost him I literally felt I had been cut in half. I thought I had it all figured out - but this the second day of 2021 after just a few tears this morning - I realised something - I was still a whole person. That his half was still part of me. The special memories that can bring tears as well as smiles - are held in me and I feel that because they are there and buried in me - so many over so many years - that the whole of me includes so much of him that I will never lose him - and as I hold those memories close it is like a warm glow. This is a new feeling - is it some kind of acceptance at last? I will ask him later when I write in the journal. The books I have written in for the last eighteen months - at first tear stained incomprehensible ramblings. Now still declarations of how much I love and miss him but also chat - asking him questions about things that concern me - telling him about our wonderful children and confiding in him and asking him to look after a dear friend who has recently died of Covid - just like I am trying to support his wife for I truly know what she is going through. My journals to him are like the nights we sat talking - for after 40 years we still had so much to talk about.
I loved, and was truly loved, all my life and like most people on this site who are grieving, believe our love story to be the best - our relationship like no other - just like you all do. I still feel that love, the warmth of it - and if I am wavering I ask for a sign. The white feather on the coffee table - no doubt from the sofa - but why in the middle of the coffee table when I have just said to him show me you are still here with us? Yes of course I feel robbed of so many things we will never do together - watching a travel programme and thinking we never went there - now we never will. That does make me sad - but then we spent so many years of just doing things that made us happy and I know I was blessed. To try and explain to my daughter what real head over heels love is like - you have to experience it - you cannot tell people. I had that head over heels, I had the whole package as they say. No one can ever take that away - he is part of me and always will be and I can see that now.
I do not know how to finish this post - as words are not enough - for all I want to do is offer you comfort and hope.
xxx