Grieving, Healing, Wondering

When you have lost someone you love, grieving takes as long as it takes; for me it took about two and a half years. I’ve thought about our lives, the good and the bad; and come to peace with my dear husband’s death.

For me grieving was a process of facing all the every day things I’d be doing without him for the rest of my life and remembering the happy times, while facing up to all the shit either of us did wrong. I pondered and cried, until I’m pretty well cried out on the subject. This doesn’t mean I don’t get melancholy at holidays; these are sadness or gladness days depending on how strong, or where my head is on the given day.

To me the coming to grips with mistakes I’ve made in life along with my better choices needed to be part of this process. Oh, hot damn, when I make a mistake, I’m prone to whoppers, but thank God, when I made this tally I didn’t come out realizing I was an asshole or worse yet, married one. A friend came to the conclusion she had married an asshole who never loved her; it totally broke this woman.  

The first year I lost almost forty pounds without trying. As I’m sure most of you are thinking, the second phase of mourning calls for binge eating; yeah, but I’ve kept it to a minimum, so I weigh maybe tens pounds less than when Kirt died, but I’m eight sizes smaller because with just a couple of lapses I’ve been lifting weights at a gym for two years.  My resolution to do something for myself on a regular basis paid off.

Movies and the gym gave me the only relief from thinking about my husband and the life I’d lost; I grieved obsessively. Later travel helped; sitting in plazas or squares, watching people, wondering about their lives gave me space to construct a new life for myself.

In the grieving process you may have noticed that every time you do something positive to help you feel better something major, but everything felt major, goes wrong to keep you in the negative zone. Car trouble, family, pets dying, pretty much all usual life shit just pulled me back into the abyss. 

For me solving problems without becoming upset is a clear sign I am healing. So what do I do with x number of years of a new life?