Sometimes I forget…..

Grief is mixed up and very complicated, it doesn’t have a defined end only a defined start. It comes and goes in its intensity like waves on the shoreline.

Some days I laugh and joke and anyone looking at me would never know the heartbreak that lays just under the surface. Other days I cry too easily and people seem surprised that its been 3 years and still my tears flow so readily. Sometimes I want to explain to them how it surprises me too and that if I had any control over them I wouldn’t do it. I want to assure them I am not looking for sympathy or attention- that this is just my reality.

The worst times, are the times when you have just woken up in the morning, or you have been engrossed in a book or a movie, and you have actually forgotten for a few moments that you are a widow, that you’ll never see him again, that he died. Then the grief rushes in as fresh as if it just happened, the shock, the indescribable agony of knowing that he is truly gone and I find myself crying in great heaving sobs like I did that night 3 years ago. I cannot explain this feeling to many people because it feels so strange even to me, that my mind can still play tricks on me, that I can forget he’s dead for those brief moments. Surviving the remembering takes all my strength and leaves me washed out and sad, afraid to close my eyes because I’ll see too much in my mind that I want to forget.

Other times I cry for my children’s loss, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose a parent when you are 8, 14 and 22. I feel angry that they will do so many things and achieve so much without their dad being there.

I guess I want to try and explain why I, and many other people, still cry for those we have lost no matter the time frame. I wish society would see this as “normal”  and allow people to freely grieve instead of forcing them into “getting over it” in a year or under to make them feel less uncomfortable. Its funny how much we have evolved emotionally over the years but grief is still one of the last taboos.