|
Saturday, September 06, 2003
From DaveP on the WidowNet Message Board:
a href="http://www.fortnet.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=22;t=000728;go=older"
"A smart man pointed out to me that grief is like drinking from a well. Somedays you need to sit and drink very long and deeply, somtimes filling the bucket 20 or more times. This is especially true during the newness phase of this whole process. However, there will be times when you just stop by the well and sip from a cup. This horrid grief comes and goes. In the beginning it completely takes over your whole being. It is the only feeling in your mind and body and it is most debilitating. It does start to ease up. There is definitely a light at the tunnel. You hurt because you loved very deeply and truly, and that love is still there you just don't know where to put it so it turns to pain and longing."
Unknown 9:12 PM
Yet another in my journey through this all. This is a quote from C.S. Lewis, talking of grief. I think in many ways it's an apt analogy of what really is happening; I can't explain in. His words:
Getting over it soon?
But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation on appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg.
He has “got over it”.
But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and always perhaps pretty bad one’s and he will always be a one legged man. There will hardly be any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different.
His whole life will be changed.
All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too.
At present (in my grief) I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg.
But I shall never be a biped again.
-“A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis
Taken from a wonderful tribute by Jerry McFadyen after the death of his wife, Teresa.
Unknown 8:52 PM
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
I found this page recently. Finally, someone who can put into words what I've been thinking these past 2 years, especially at night after the kids are asleep.
The author is a widow with children; at the time of her husband's death, her kids were the same age as mine when Leonor died. And we would have been the same age, too. I'm not much of a writer, though. It's nice to know that others feel the same way...
Here's what she wrote:
Why is this article entitled “When the Noise Stops?” Let me share with you an entry in my journal: “Today, nine months later, there is nothing unusual about this day. Today there was no special anniversary, no items of Jeff’s that I came across, no phone calls from old friends, just a regular day. And I miss him. I ache for him. Why? Because today is just a regular day – except when the night comes and the noise stops there is no voice, no laughter, no arguments (boy how I miss those stupid arguments now), no "I'm home" at 6 o’clock at night, no nothing. I have no one to split a sub sandwich with and no one to eat my pizza crusts.”
"When the Noise Stops"
Unknown 8:48 PM
|