Grief Encounters and Managing Myself

July 3, 2023

In the grocery store again, and a woman glanced at the items in my cart and said to me, “I know whose house I want to eat at!” And when I turned to face her, she said, “You must love to cook!” I replied, “I do love to cook.” And that exchange led to her telling me how she used to love to cook but lost that desire when her husband passed. I told her that I’d recently lost my husband as well, and the conversation naturally led to our love for our husbands and what wonderful people they were. She told me during the first year of her husband's passing, she had to eat most of her meals while standing at her kitchen sink, because it was too painful for her to sit at the table without him. She said that it’s been seven years since her husband’s passing, and just recently she woke up reaching and touching his side of the bed, looking for him. And in her partially awake state, she said she thought to herself, “He’s just probably in another room.” And I understood exactly what she’d experienced…because I experience those same feelings. But at the same time, as I was engaging in conversation with this woman I’d never met before, I wondered about this “timely” encounter. And I found myself “stepping outside of myself”, watching myself pouring my heart out to a total stranger, as she shared some of her grieving experiences with me…I was observing and participating in a Grief Session right there in an isle in the grocery store. I even wondered how this was even happening at this moment, in this place. But what I walked away from that conversation with is the reassurance that the pain of loss of a dear husband who has walked through life with you and held your hand, lifted you up and loved you dearly, gets easier to bear…with time.

July 10, 2023

Today I finally started taking down Al’s clothes from our closet…making myself do it, sorting them in piles to give to his son, our neighbor who helped us by keeping our yards mowed while Al was ill, and to Goodwill. I kept remembering him in them and looking at them for the last time…flooded with emotions! In one of the piles that needed to be laundered, I found a little grocery list he had written and stuck in his pants pocket…I had to suck my breath in hard to keep the tears at bay. The work of grieving continues…

Letting Go of Al's Clothes

A Last Grocery List

July 11, 2023

My thoughts are very quiet today. In the early hours of the morning, before daybreak, I was awake – looking at the pictures I took of Al in his last days at the hospital, and the ones I took of him at the funeral home when I took my last look at his sleeping face and touched his soft hair, saying my last goodbye to him. What I noticed about myself while I was looking at the photos in the wee hours of the quiet hours of the early morning, is that my heart swelled with love for him, but my eyes did not weep. I just looked at the images of Al, held him in my heart, and then I slept deeply and peacefully…And my thoughts are very quiet today. Thank you, Al.

Together During the Coronavirus Era -2021