A lot. And during all this time I have been waxing and waning between feeling good about our lives now and the directions we can go OR the keen sense of pain and sorrow that I am without my wife. At times it feels as if no matter what direction I may go in, this relationship with grief will always be the same. A relationship that can feel just shy of debilitating.
When it comes to dealing with grief and loss in today’s world, one tool appears to be the only tool available to the grieving. In 1969 Swiss American Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published, On Death and Dying. In her work she outlined and defined the, Five Stages of Grief. In her work she spoke and explained the five stages being denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Today the five stages of grief and a basic understanding of it are as almost as common place in the community at large as they are in the mental health community. And although Kubler-Ross took pains to explain that the five stages are not steps toward a progression of complete healing, but possible points along the links that make up a person’s entire life, the lay community still tends to view the process as finite and ending. In short, should I work through all these stages I will have grieved fully and be able to move on with my life. But being wonderfully complex creatures, as human beings are, the truth is never so neat.
So how do I begin to keep moving forward in my living, yet at the same time honor the life and love of my wife without needing to stay fixed in a state of sharp pain? Well, I did not know how in the beginning, but what I would tell everyone who asked and many who did not, was that I am trying to create a new normal for myself and my sons. I began creating our world around the idea that my wife’s presence in our lives was always felt, but that her being present was no more. So that meant looking for ways to honor her memory that celebrated the relationship she had with the boys and me. At the same time I needed to be the one who prepared the meals for our family, washed our clothes, attended school meetings and was the only “bread winner.” I began to question myself and think of ways that we could honor her and respect our loss. But to also move forward in our lives and embrace all the milestones that the boys and I have ahead.
The first thing I had to do was accept that I was not my wife and so I would not do things the way she did. We were a great team at caring for our children, but now it is my responsibility and to second guess my decisions against what she would want done only would hinder mine and the boys growth. But in honoring her I also took stock of many of the experiences, values and relationships that she and I wanted for our sons. Those are still important to me and so I am going to make it a priority to give the boys some of those things as they get older.
The next thing I have had to accept is that her death and more importantly her living, changed me. I am not the same person that I was when my wife died. But nor am I the same guy that she met and ultimately married. So why give her death any more profound of an influence on my life than her living did? I shouldn’t. So I am not doing that. In truth the pain of her death is only pain because I acknowledge the presence of her living in my life. So I will give the experience of her life more meaning to me and I am doing it simply by doing what I spoke of earlier, acknowledging her presence, but I must live in the present. And with each little movement forward of acknowledging her continued influence and importance in my life, by making choices that are suited to my situation now and recognizing that all of this experience is now a part of my life history and makes me who I am today. I am creating my new normal.