This morning I was thinking about what a difference there is when you lose a spouse. I can only see it from my own perspective but having been married for so long it has made me feel lost. For the first time in my life I feel completely alone.
This does not mean that I am alone. My family is wonderful and I have friends from my longtime home and caring friends and neighbors here. However, there is the sensation that I am totally alone for the first time in my life.
I have lost people in my life: parents, relatives, friends. I miss them and feel the lost connection but I never felt lost myself. With this loss there comes the severing of years of closeness. There is now no one who knows me as well as my husband. The years of memories have lost the person who held them too. No one else can relive those with me. Just the ability to say “remember when” and be understood is gone.
My grandmother, at one hundred, said there was no one who she could talk to about her past and share those memories. Now I understand.
We do grow with each experience in life. Some of the most painful produce the most change and the most empathy. Life is always teaching us. We just have to use that wisdom to reach out to others.
worry-less-journey 