Stepping Out

It's late... or early, depending on how much sleep I'll get before the day starts. The insomnia hasn't been too bad lately, but here I am, middle of the night, alone with my computer. I'm not sure what it is that keeps me awake; it might be a too-crowded bed, or the deafening silence of my own isolation.

I’m not truly isolated. I have children I love intensely; I love and am thoroughly loved by a very sweet man. It’s just that I am, as we all are, alone. The grief is, no doubt, what accentuates this feeling. I have a large emptiness, a hollowness that all widows experience, I suspect. Does the emptiness diminish as we cover the miles between death and our “new normal”? I hope so.

What does it take to lessen the emptiness? It’s not just time. It must be tears, and (dammit) exercise, and consciousness and living in the moment, and sleep, and basic self-care. It must also be acceptance and rage and guilt and despair and self-loathing and therapy. It will take sunshine and laughter and moments of transcendent joy.

The grief may always be with me. I expect to “experience temporary periods of acute grief long after the death.” I also know that “a course of mourning does not decline linearly with time.” What I do not yet know is when the grief will not be a defining characteristic of my life, but rather, a thin slice of the pie that makes up the whole of me. What I do know is that it will happen, is already happening….

From Charlotte’s Web:
Fragile and magical shadows

Silently start to appear

Lovely and lyrical

Silvery miracle

Charlotte's web


Sometimes when somebody loves you

Miracles somehow appear

And there in the warp and the woof is the proof of it

Charlotte's web