Often when we have failures and fears, it’s easy to lose hope and falter in faith. We wonder if God has a plan for our lives, and we begin to question if God is real and if He cares about us.
As I deal with the grief of the passing of my husband. just over 21 months, I have been working hard on my depression. I cannot sleep, have persistent feelings of sadness, and have lost interest in anything. I have always cried for a long time and don’t want to go out. The only thing I want is to die.
I have been in therapy and listening to books on audibles but it’s still hard for me since we shared our lives, He held my heart; we shared tears and some blessings for many years.
Why is it that people judge us? Say that I’m making a big deal? Why? Because they are not in our shoes. Close to the holidays was worse for me, since Larry, myself, and our daughter traveled to my birth country (Guatemala), and Larry became a different person entirely. He was Santa Claus for the people. He was a great Santa, visiting the children in the hospitals and the orphanage, and even the adults. We collected gifts all year to take back to Guatemala for them.
This was my second holiday without him at my side. The first year I believe I was more in shock. I knew he was going to die, but that did not change anything.
On top of that, my cousin passed away just before Thanksgiving. We were very close to each other, only two years apart. We grew up together and we always talked at least 3 to 4 times a week. This affected me a lot, too.
I was so depressed after Thanksgiving. It hit me hard for a few days. I stayed in my bedroom. I cried alone and wanted to die. Many things came to my mind.
I experienced so much with Larry’s passing that left a hole in my heart.
This Christmas, too, was different. I was very depressed and didn’t want to eat. I cried a lot, felt very alone, and wanted to die. I wasn’t hungry and never slept through the night, getting a couple of hours at a time if I was lucky. I was still just so sad and lonely all the time. Why, when we lose someone we love, do our entire lives change? Changes in our lives, our routines, our plans. Losing my husband and my best friend, my right arm, is the worst thing that has happened to me. I don’t feel like myself anymore, I go for a walk and come home and cry because he is not there, I feel like screaming. I am confused and forgetful. I have trouble concentrating, I can’t focus. This happens to me over and over again.
I am working very hard to get out of this loneliness and depression. My therapist suggested several books and so did my daughter. She suggested the book The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos since my husband was in hospice. She said the book is good and will help you understand what was going on. The book helped me to understand a lot about my husband being in hospice. I listened to the book and was very emotional but understood a lot about the emotions Larry must have had.
The book is very good. It is a raw and honest reflection on grief. Also, I went to several teachings on how to deal with grief.
I love to watch Sunday Morning and I watched a segment with Anderson Cooper talking about grief. He read a quote from a book, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion,
“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death.”
for there to be better days ahead.