People ask me how I’m doing, how I’m feeling. They wonder what the loss of Jon has been like these past eight months. I try to come up with some words. I find myself thinking, and sometimes saying out loud, that Jon’s death feels like an assault. I feel stricken, stricken by grief.
Grief stricken. That old-timey phrase works for me, especially the stricken part of it. Death is a violent thing. It strikes.
It struck Jon down brutally and irreversibly. And in those moments when I let in the reality of my new and unwelcome life, it strikes me down as well.
There are sunnier ways of thinking about death. Some of them are floating around cyberspace right now. There’s that line, for example, from the Disney+ miniseries, “WandaVision.” “What is grief, if not love persevering?”
It’s a lovely thought. I try to think it. It would be so nice, after all, to experience Jon’s disappearance in such a rich way. To feel blessed, not stricken, by grief
I’ll feel that way some day, they tell me.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” I’m not there yet.
Barbara, Your words, “…death feels like an assault…” and “…It strikes…” feel true to me.
My husband of 40+ years died on September 8th, and I do not believe the goal is to “get through it,” “get over it,” or even “to make peace with it.” Rather, I think in the long run, the goal for me will be “to learn to live with it.”
If one has made a good loving life with a partner, there is a loneliness that is only for them. And frankly, I don’t see grief as being meliorated by “seeing it coming.” I think one can simultaneously feel joy about something/someone else and other emotions, too, but those feelings stand next to one’s grief in a parallel reality. Again, they do not meliorate it.
I accept the reality of my husband’s death and bow to life, but sadness is deep and vast when one has loved and been loved for many years.
Kathleen, You have expressed something here that I have been feeling, but haven’t been able to quite describe: that one can feel joy and other emotions, “but those feelings stand next to one’s grief in a parallel reality … they do not meliorate it.”
That’s helpful, because right now I don’t see the grief as ever going away.
I’m so sad to hear of your husband’s death. Forty years!
I don’t think it’s possible to ever see it as a blessing. I feel that quote in a different way, more as encouragement that love does persevere after death and it’s possible to experience that love within the context of your grief, in the present moment. However, it may not be comforting to you at this moment in your journey and that’s fine too. What is helpful to one person can be the opposite to another.
Hmmm. I was seeing the blessing lurking inside the grief — that one is still capable of love, even amidst the sadness.
Barbara, Thank you for all your thoughtful words. I am so impressed by how you get through these difficult times after the sudden loss of your life partner. You do it so gracefully.
Your blog posts — plus your great, understated photos of Jon “au natural” — are a comfort.
It’s nice to know that I am able to capture the “real” Jon — according to someone whose known him even longer than I have.
Yes.. Eight months seems like yesterday.
So true.
Stricken is the appropriate word here because of the suddenness of Jon’s death. It’s my understanding that you did not see this grief coming. You have my sympathy.
That’s right. We didn’t see this coming. But I wonder how much some advance warning would have helped. I have a feeling — not much!