I’ve saved the letters I wrote to my life mate/soul mate after he died, thinking that one day I would write a sequel to Grief: The Great Yearning, the story of my first year of grief. I’d planned to call the sequel Grief: The Great Learning, and detail the lessons gleaned from the second and third years of my grief. Because I no longer want to keep revisiting such angst, there will be no sequel, so I’m publishing the letters here on this blog as a way of safeguarding (and sharing) them.
Although this letter was written three and a half years ago, it reflects much of what I am thinking about now. My father recently died, and now I am facing what I could only think about back then — the vast open plain of the future before me.
I am packing to leave this house and go . . . I know not where. I’ll probably stay around here for a while. I have made new friends after those referred to in this letter disappeared out of my life, and it just occurred to me that I can speak about all of my concerns to at least one of those women. It’s nice and helps offset the loneliness that still hits me every evening.
And oh, yes. I still keep hoping for major changes — good changes.
I’ve been going through an upsurge of grief, missing you so damn much. It stuns me, like a snake stunned by a rock thrown at it, to think I’ll never see you again. You’d think I’d have come to an accommodation with that, but such ”acceptance” of that fact does not bring acceptance of what it means — death for you, loneliness for me.
Life involves people, doesn’t it? I’m trying to “people” my life, but it’s not the same thing as being connected to one specific person. We were often lonely even when we were together, but this loneliness is incomprehensible. I’m considering staying here after my father dies because at least I know people here, but so many of the people I have met, especially those from my grief group, have already faded from my life. And if the rest disappear, then what?
It should be exciting to have the vast open plain of the future before me, but all I see is bleakness and aloneness. I have no one to talk to about my concerns. I don’t know how to cope with that. I keep hoping for major changes (good changes), but all that seems to be happening is a slow descent into inevitability.
I hope you’re not lonely. I couldn’t bear that.
Oh Pat…this is so hard to read. I hope you don’t still feel this way! But, if you do, I understand. And I send you a big hug and many prayers.
I sometimes feel this way, though without the pain I felt when I wrote the letter. Most often, I’m now just going with the flow — believing that things will work out or they won’t. If they don’t work out, I’ll deal with it then. I’ll probably always be lonely, though, always be aware of his being amputated from my life, but I’m getting used to it. When I see my the women I know dealing with ailing husbands, and how it’s just the beginning for some of them, I have a sneaking feeling of gladness that I don’t have that to look forward to. The pain of watching someone die was . . . well, you know how terrible it was, And it’s now behind me.
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