Grief

I just finished watching Middlemarch and was struck by these quotes:

"Grief is a kind of illness ... it can rob us of vital energies."

How absolutely true. While you are grieving the loss of your spouse, you should make every attempt to take good care of your fragile ego. Continuing the quote from Middlemarch:

"You have nothing - nothing to reproach yourself."

Too often we play the woulda, shoulda, coulda game, second guessing the moves we made in the past and blaming our actions. Don't. During this trying time try not to beat yourself up. Reward yourself for having survived another day. Buy a new tube of lipstick or tie. Treat yourself to a movie.

Be kind to your grieving self and try to stay healthy. Lean on friends for support. Ask for help when you need it. Don't be too proud to show your vulnerable side to others. The point is to survive the initial onslaught of grief so that you can tackle the things that matter.

Slogging through the pain

The first time I noticed that I was healing was in the car. I was driving to work, and all of a sudden realized I had not cried in over half a day. This was six months after our separation. Before that moment, I grieved throughout the day every day, excusing myself to go to the bathroom at work, or crying at the drop of a hat at home. The pain would sometimes be so great, it felt like a knife was cutting me from inside out. (Click here for my previous post on this subject.)

The Modern Woman's Divorce Guide also discusses the indescribable (but inevitable) pain that one experiences. This stage is not only normal but necessary before you can begin to heal and move on. You literally feel you are going to die, and it will take all your resources (friends, family, strength of will) to face this dreadful period. In fact, I needed a mild anti-depressant, since my mind was unable to concentrate at work. I took it for only six months, but it helped me get over the hump.

Time does work wonders. My change was so gradual that at first that I didn't notice I was getting stronger. Then all of a sudden I would realize that it had been days since I cried; or that I was laughing at jokes again; or that I had completely lost myself in a book or a movie. The change is not linear. Often when I thought I had turned a corner, something would trigger a memory and I would plunge back to deep grieving.

Inexorably over time, the good days began to outweigh the bad days. Five years after the divorce I was largely healed. Today, six years later, I look forward to spending time by myself. The tears are gone, and I no longer yearn for the old days or my old friends or my former lifestyle, or my husband, for that matter, who has become unrecognizable.

These days I live totally in the moment. So, when you feel that your days are endless and that your grief will never subside, know that you will one day be happy and content again. After your restlessness vanishes, you will find yourself a different person, much stronger and perhaps a bit more cynical, but vastly wiser.

And that's not a bad trade off for having gone through this trial by fire.

Loss: Divorce vs. Death

A high school friend recently lost her husband to a heart attack. His death was sudden and unexpected. It has only been two months and she is still in the throes of grieving. The initial shock has worn off and now reality is hitting her square on: He won’t be coming back. My words have been a comfort to her, as I know exactly what she’s going through, but then, after our last conversation, she said something that all widows and widowers eventually say to me - "You don’t understand."

Don’t understand? Of course I do! Divorce is a death. It also ranks right up there with the most stressful periods in your life. You go through the same grieving phases and you make similar adjustments. There are differences, of course.

In divorce:
1) Your spouse, though dead to you in all the ways that count, is still a living, breathing person. Just somewhere else.
2) There is dignity in death, but no dignity in divorce. Rituals and ceremonies are designed to help a grieving family go through the horrendous stages of the death of a loved one. Divorces are looked upon as messes and failures. In the media divorces are often the butt of jokes. And what I discovered, with some shock and bewilderment, is that you are expected to get over your grief rather quickly. Even before my divorce was final, my friends wanted - no, needed - me to be happy and normal.
3) In most instances, the widow or widower inherits everything, including house, custody of the children, and a substantial life insurance policy. There are no certainties in divorce settlements (even though in theory the laws are set up to be equitable), and lawyers seem to receive a substantial amount of your assets if there is a disagreement.

The first point I made, that your spouse is still living, seems to be the one that widows and widowers concentrate on. For all intent and purposes, mine was dead to me. He looked at me as if I was a specimen to be examined under a microscope. Since the divorce, I’ve had no contact with him and seldom see him. The two times I did, he looked at me with indifferent eyes. There was no warmth, no sense of recognition that we’d spent 32 years together (most of them happy), and no desire to share cherished memories. He'd moved on, and I realize that he rarely wastes his energy thinking about our shared past. The last time I fleetingly saw him, a small pang of separation and loss hit me all over again. In addition, when my husband left, so did his family. This felt like a double loss.

My attitude about death vs. divorce is this: Loss is loss. Yes, death is final. But the death of a marriage also has a finality to it. It is death without dignity. It means the death of your friendship with the most special person in your life. It is the death of your love and future together. In many cases it means the loss of one’s financial security. In my case it meant having to deal with a sense of failure, and having to face middle-age and menopause square on without a supportive partner. I could go on and on, but you get my meaning.

Some day my friend and I will have a discussion about these distinctions about losing one's life partner, and how much more we have in common than not. For now, I’ll let her grieve and I’ll just keep on supporting her.

Addendum: It has been almost five years since my friend lost her husband. She now recognizes that we both experienced significant life-changing losses, just as I predicted. It took her five years to land on her feet, and almost that long to realize that we have so much in common as widow and divorcee.