Losing Ground

I can feel the rungs of this ladder that I'm on, break away with each step. I can feel myself losing ground.

This is not a life...I am not living.  I breathe because my body does not know how not to, but I am not alive. I am just fooling everyone. 

It's been two years.  Two damn years and I cannot get past this feeling of soul sucking sorrow. I am slowly slipping away.

I can tell you the constant visions stopped, so there is that. That peace came at the two year mark. I still see it all, hear it all, but NOTHING like it was, so yeah...there is that.

I miss you love.  All I do is slip around this house like a ghost, a ghost of the person I was before. I still look out the window in the bathroom like I used to do when I knew you would be coming home.  I would watch you pull in and stop to get the mail. You were so damn handsome with your sunglasses on and your work clothes. You never knew I was there with my heart overflowing, did you? I still look but you don't come. Nothing is the same here, now it is silent. There is no love or laughter or joy here. There are no kids here.  It is just me, yet not.

I am a prisoner inside my head.  I am a prisoner inside this hell.  All the trying and crawling and climbing and trying some more have done nothing but distract me to time passing. I am no better and I just feel lonelier.

I miss you love...I miss you.

The Ride

As I do every day, I check the posts on the Widows bereavement sites I am a member on...there are two of them.  

Some days there is nothing said.  All is calm?  Maybe.  Hopefully.  But I know that it could also mean that today is just too much, today is so very overwhelming that there are no words...oh, they're in there.  The words are in there, flying around our heads slamming against the edges of our minds wanting out...needing out.  But the pain is too great today to let the words come.

Some days one of us, or several of us, has reached out for comfort or advice or just to share a milestone, a thought, a prayer.  And some days there is a new 'recruit', a new member to the club none of us signed up for or ever wanted to be a part of...some days there is just that tentative, bleeding sentence that says something like 'I just lost...I just found this group...thank you for listening'.  And just like that we remember we are not alone even though ALONE is the second strongest feeling we women, we widows, feel.

Today there was a post from a new member to the group, a woman who joined the 'club' only three months ago...She is wondering if any of us has ever gone through what she is going through the last few days...no crying...no living, just existing,  sleeping yet waking exhausted. Working...chores...bed, working...chores...bed...is this a phase she wants to know.  Those of us a little, or a lot further along in the journey know it is not a phase.  It is just another kind of day, or several smooshed together to create a 'phase'.  It is delicate territory.  It is a welcome reprieve, it is a survival technique that our body knows is desperately needed at precisely this moment.  It is a day or a few given to us in order to take a deep breath, get our bearings, readjust.  It is just enough time to grab hold and climb up a little further on our journey, enough time to grab hold before the ride begins again.

It's not a phase, I tell her..."it's just the ride. Not a car ride either. It is what I would think a roller coaster would be like if I had ever been on one...great highs, fast and furious lows with lots of sharp yanks around every corner. On this ride I never know what each day will bring, a high, a low, a rough corner? I open my eyes and try to gauge but can't, I head to the kitchen for coffee almost in fear sometimes...is an arm going to reach out and pull me back down to where I have just worked so hard to climb up from? Am I going to be yanked around a corner I'm not ready for? All I can do is hold on and hold strong. There is a very good reason that at age 47 I have never put myself on a roller coaster, that kind of ride is not for me...yet here I am. Thrust on here by a horrific tragic event that lasted no more than 10 minutes. I have been sentenced to a lifetime of this ride I never wanted and all I can do is hold on, hold strong and learn how to get my feet back on solid ground once again while life spins around me at such a fast and furious pace. I do not believe it to be a phase you are in...I believe it to just be the ride you are on...you are not alone though, all of us here are sitting in the seats next to you, in front of you and behind you, and we say to you hold on tight sister..."

This kind of loneliness

I found this on a website for widows and thought it was the best explanation I have found so far for the emptiness I feel and loneliness ...

Loneliness is not a surprising by-product of widowhood.  I mean, even for the people who have never been through it, it’s a no-brainer.  But frankly, I think that lonely is not a strong enough word.

There is a deep silence that comes with losing your spouse.  And it doesn't matter if you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room, you will still notice it.  It’s the quiet that comes when you don’t have that familiar voice whispering in your ear at a wedding, “Can you believe she wore that?  I mean, what was she thinking?”  It’s the missing sound of two glasses clinking together on your anniversary.  It’s the absence of someone breathing soundly next to you as you go to sleep at night.

Our friends are so good about trying to make sure that we know that we’re not alone.  And we know we’re not friendless.  We could call up any number of people if we just wanted to hang out. But we are alone. Our marriages were amputated in the prime of our lives and, for some of us, there is no prosthesis.

A lot of us, since our loss, have found comfort in chat rooms and support websites and that has helped relieve the discomfort of the amputation a little.  It’s like taking two Motrin after extensive surgery.  It eases the throbbing a bit, but when we look down, the limb is still missing.

We've found anonymous support from strangers who don’t know us but are as close as we can come to confiding in people who know exactly what we've been through.  We tell these strangers some of the most intimate details of our lives, knowing that out of thousands of people, one person might understand us and, out of thousands of people, no one will be heartless to enough say, “You did what?  You’re crazy!”  Because, if nothing else, we all have crazy in common.

It’s an anonymous way to just let our widowed freakiness spread its wings and fly.  We get support from people who understand what REAL retail therapy is.  People who get that a sleepless night with a newborn is one thing while a sleepless night with a dead spouse is a whole other deal.  People who understand how guilt, anger, frustration, and sadness all come in a beautifully wrapped package with our names on it, signed “With Love, Widowhood.”

Finding these groups has buffered the fact that, with our spouses gone, most of us have lost the person we would have leaned on when the worst thing we could have possibly imagine happening…happened.  It’s almost like we need to roll over in bed and say in utter disbelief to our spouses, “Did you hear that you died?  And you were so young!”  This would be followed by a hug from them, a pat on the back, and the murmuring of some comforting words while we cried on their shoulders.

But when we roll over, well, our spouses already know that they died.  It spoils it a little.
I don’t think that most people, who haven’t experienced loss, truly understand that element of solitude.  And that’s the very foundation of what makes us so lonely.  The person who cared when something really great or really bad happened is missing.  The person who was just as excited and saddened by the milestones of our kids is someplace else (I hope). The person who was just as invested in our lives and the decisions we made is now (again, hopefully) enjoying everlasting comfort while we slug it out down here on our own.

Do you remember the moment that you truly felt the change?  I mean, the time when you realized that this was it?  When you catapulted from married to involuntarily single?  For you, it may not have been a moment.  But it was for me.  I was leaving Wal-Mart (where so many of my breakdown moments occur) when I noticed that “Wild Hogs” was about to come out on DVD Now, my husband and I had had many failed attempts to go see that movie in the theater, so when I saw that big billboard up at the store, I automatically got excited.  I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to get home and tell him it’s finally out!”  I think there was an audible thud as reality came crashing down on me standing next to the stale cookies that were on sale.

As most of us feel, I would give anything for just one more day, one more conversation with my husband.  I've had dreams about it.  We’re just lying in bed and I’m telling him all about what the kids are up to.  We both know that he’s gone, but I’m filling him in anyway.

Those are the mornings I wake up and feel the most alone, the most like I’m missing that appendage.  And even though there are so many people I could call who would commiserate with me, they’re just not in my head and in my heart living my life.

And does it make sense when I say when I’m feeling this way sometimes I just want to be left alone?

---by Catherine Tidd