"Good" Grief

Last night I went to the alternate group grief session at Tidewell Hospice in Sarasota. Tidewell is a premier hospice provider which we used last year when my mother-in-law "failed to thrive" after multiple hip surgeries and therapy attempts.

That's a story for another day.

Tidewell served her and us for the last few months of her life and was a tremendous help.

They offer grief counselling for free to anyone in the community whether your loved one had been in hospice care or not.

This meeting was much larger than the Wednesday one of last week; there had to be 30ish people in attendance.

Everyone had the opportunity to introduce him/herself and tell a little bit about their loss and what they hoped to get out of the session. Only one other woman had lost her spouse suddenly; everyone else had been in hospice care for some amount of time.

Though each story was very personal and individual there were certain threads that ran through all of them. This was not a surprise to me! It only makes sense that losing a loved one would leave you feeling alienated, fearful, sad beyond belief, angry, and - the one most relevant to me - unable to believe the death actually occurred.

My head knows, yes, that Tom is dead, but my heart is slower to accept that truth. It's not that I expect his return (he was great but he wasn't God, after all!?), it's just that I am stupefied he's gone. For him to have been so active, so vital and then to be felled so quickly and without a whimper still has me shaking my head.

And missing him!

I expect that will go on for the rest of my life....

But what I came away with last night was that I do not need grief counseling, personally. I have let Tom go and truly believe he is now where he is meant to be and so am I. The Lord called him for reasons I do not know or understand but call him He did and that's an accepted truth in my mind.

I am moving forward, fearful or not, and have confidence I will be able to do the things I must to continue having a full and joyful life. I expect to cry but more than that I expect to laugh and take heart from the love all around me.

In truth, I feel so blessed having had Tom in my life for 47 years. I consider myself LUCKY even despite the loss!!

And I'm excited about the adventure of being alone. I never expected it, never made a contingency plan for it, never even saw it as a possibility but here it is and it has to be dealt with. My answer is to confront it boldly.

Bring it on!!

I feel ready, willing, and able to proceed with my life.

And so I shall. Tales will continue to be told of The Widow Judy. Stay tuned!!