Time...How to Make it Not Seem Like It Is Beating You Down

As a widow, I sometimes feel like the calendar is my enemy…you know what I am talking about, I am sure.  When it is all fresh, your mind categorizes time in days, sometimes in hours.  “It has been three days, it has been a week, it has been three weeks, six weeks….” It’s like you have some automatic calendar mechanism in your head that flips every day over and spits out the tally for you.  Then it switches to months, then years.  

Then of course you have the anniversary of various events to muddle through.  The first holiday since your spouse died, the first birthday you or your kids have without your spouse, the first passing of your spouse’s birthday, the list is endless.  Eventually, it rolls around to the anniversary of the date your spouse died.  UGH – such a tough one.  For me, the days leading up to each anniversary are the worst.  For whatever reason, I can remember a lot of the moments leading up to his death in the days before: the day he bought the bike (yes, he bought his first motorcycle three days before he was killed on the damn thing), at what restaurants we ate, etc.  I remember that the night before he died, we bought a Wii gaming system, and I kicked his ass in boxing and in Guitar Hero.  I continued to play GH even as he fell asleep in the chair next to me.  I gave him grief the next morning for wimping out on me because he was getting stomped.  We took the kids to the mall that day, ate lunch at a microbrewery.  He stopped after two beers because he knew he was going to ride his bike for the first time several hours later.  I find the detail to which my memories are spelled out in my head weird – especially since I can’t remember what the hell I had for lunch yesterday – but I can remember the buffalo chicken pizza I had for lunch that day.

I tell you all this to perhaps give you some comfort.  If you take the days one at a time, they grow into weeks.  The weeks grow into months. The months grow into years.  You find that through this calendar metamorphosis, you become amazed with your strength, and proud of yourself for getting through those dates.

So – how do you get there?  I have a few tips to share…hope they help in some way…

·         You seek the positives.  This one is tough.  How the hell can you find anything positive in the loss of your spouse?  And if you do, you might be (ok, you WILL be) feeling guilty because you are finding some kind of happiness after your world came crashing down.  Don’t worry.  No one is keeping track of your level of pleasure, trust me.  One example that comes to mind in my own experiences is the ability to see who my true friends are.  I had many people come to my rescue after my spouse died.  There are different levels of these friends, of course….there’s the ones who you were never really “text in the middle of the night” friends, there are ones who you can contact at any time, any day and they will be there for you.  The theme is, though – the true friends listen.  The true friends stand by your side no matter how stupid you get. They also stop and think where you are coming from – that the reason you are acting like you are losing your mind sometimes is because you are, and because of what you have gone through.  They are also the ones who will tell you when you are acting like a fool, too.  Having discovered the depth of these friendships has brought me happiness on a level I didn’t think was possible after the tragic events that rocked my world.

·         You have rituals.  Everybody has these, whether they have lost a spouse or not.  But to me, my rituals became more prominent after my loss.  Some of them are minuscule, things that no one notices but you, like saying “good morning” to your loved one even though he is gone.  In the case of my kids, my oldest goes to bed every night with her daddy’s ACU jacket on – no matter the temperature.  It is her way of staying close to him.  It doesn’t make her sad, just gives her comfort.  Then you have the large scale rituals – in my case, I have a party every year at my humble abode for my hubby’s b-day.  We build fires to stand by and shoot the breeze around, I cook a TON of food, and the invitee list is of those who have “been there” for me and the kids over the years.  It grows every year it seems, and I know that Dave would have enjoyed it immensely.  Correction – I KNOW he enjoys it immensely.  It is good stuff – and it gives the kids a way to see exactly how much they are loved and supported by so very many people.

·         You seek signs.  This one will amuse you, it will also amaze you.  You’ll hear that whole “everything happens for a reason” line a bazillion times after your spouse is gone, so much so you want to smack the next person that says it.  But there are many times when you see it materialize, and you can’t help but say it yourself.  These moments, too, have a range – for example, you’ll experience the little ones like his favorite song coming on the radio at a time when you have been sad and crying your eyes out.  This one’s a stretch for me – my husband and I had a somewhat inside joke about the song “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (yes, spell check, I spelled that correctly, leave me alone) – and my local radio station plays the hell out of that song…but it does seem more random when it pops up on my iPod during a shuffle since I have 3000+ songs on there.  The big ones take your breath away sometimes though – my example would be that there seems to be some kind of bizarre “pay it forward” thing going on in Widow World in my area…Soon after Dave’s death, I was introduced to a fellow widow with three kids who helped me immensely – because she KNEW what I was experiencing on a level that no one else could.  She was a couple years “in” her journey at the time when I lost Dave.  Then, there have been at least three women close to me (either through my kids’ school or through work) that have lost their dudes too early, and I hope I have been of comfort to them in some way just like my friend was to me after my loss.  Do events like this happen for a reason?  Is the reason to help others through this?  I hold on to the fact that maybe, just maybe, this is part of some plan – and I seek ways to help as many as I can.  Trust me – through helping others you get some little semblance of peace.

These are just some things that I have taken comfort in…they may not work for you, or they might.  The theme here is that you HAVE to find something – anything – to grasp onto to make the road ahead a smooth one.  Sit back and figure out what that is for you.  And hold onto it for dear life.  You know that you have gained an appreciation for how short life is, how fleeting every moment is – it gives you strength.  Use it, share it.