Ambushed….

I lost my husband to lung cancer in 2011.  We had been married for 25 years but together closer to 30.  We had a year long time to say goodbye while he battled the stage 4 disease that cut his life way too short.  He was a 'hard-working man' who really had actually worked very hard at jobs that he really would have preferred not to do, so he could have the ability to retire and play hard while he was still healthy.  He retired and within weeks was diagnosed with cancer which took his life in less than a year.  It sucked, for him and for me.

I thought I was doing OK after he passed.  I had things to take care of and get settled.  I had a summer home to get away to.  I had activities to do and friends who promised they would always be there for me and family who came and went from time to time.  I was a rock!!   WRONG!

The infamous “they” say that all of the firsts after a death are hard.  First holidays, first birthdays, first anniversaries, etc are triggers that remind the one left behind of their loss.  I managed through the spring holidays, the summer events and got all the way through Christmas and thought I really had a handle on it all.  But then I got to New Year’s Eve and just went on a sudden downward spiral.  I do not know whether it was the fact that New Year’s Eve was usually our quiet celebration of another year together or whether it was the “Winter Blues” or the fact that everyone seems to go into hibernation after the holidays and I needed to be with someone.  Whatever it was, I found that I would get up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and kick back in my recliner with Molly in my lap and not move for hours and hours and hours.

I knew I needed to do something.  I knew I needed to find some help.  I knew I could no longer think I was doing fine, and I had to find a way to get the help I needed.

Over the summer, I had noticed groups listed in the local community paper that dealt with grief.  I had toyed with the idea of going to one of them, but most of the time they met at times that did not work for me or they were far enough away as to make traveling to them difficult.  So I did not take the step of going to a meeting.  As January was coming to an end, I spotted another listing for the group called GriefShare that was being started at the local Mennonite Church the very evening I saw the paper… can you say ‘meant to be’?

So I pried my butt out of the recliner and drove to the church to become part of the first day of presentation of GriefShare in Parkesburg.  They way the sessions work is there is a video played that runs for about 45 minutes.  In these videos professionals who have gone through the grief of losing a son/daughter, mother/father sibling or child talk about the feelings that they had and what they found worked for them in order to get through the grief and back into life.  Then we would break up into smaller discussion groups and we would talk and share and cry and pray.  After 13 weeks, we learned that each of us need to grieve in our own way but there are things that we will continue to have happen, long after we think our grieving is finished.

One of them is being ‘ambushed’ by emotions.  It is going along just fine for days and weeks and even months.  You are making new connections, blending the new pieces of your life with the parts of the old that you are keeping and thinking that you are really doing well.  Then, you will be driving along in the car, listening to the radio and a song comes on… and you are suddenly in tears and wishing your loved one could be there to put their arms around you and just give you a hug.  Or you are cooking a meal and a smell will waft up out of the pot and you feel the deep pangs of being lonely and wishing you could share one more meal with the one you have lost.

That is when you are so grateful for the new circle of friends that you made at the grief support group.  Our group has been gathering for a monthly dinner since the sessions ended in April.  I had one tonight and while there are only  a few who still come, we get to laughing as well as sharing tears and when we are done, we are closer than we were at the beginning of the evening and feeling good about where we are in life and ready to tackle what lies ahead.  We are not going to be meeting in November and December because of the holidays and I, for one, will miss the dinners.  I hope and pray that the dinners will pick up again in January.