Having dedicated my life to the nursing profession and helping others, I had found my calling when in my 12th year of nursing I started my first job in Hospice. I knew at that moment that this was what God had been training me for , this was what I was meant to do with my life and through this venue I could truly make a difference in someone elses life. I grew as a person, as a nurse and as a wife and mother just by experiencing the lives of others. The families who I saw as heros, the ones who suffered through months and years of life ending illnesses and then finally saw their loved one slip away , The patients taught me so much about, bravery, strength and determination.
I had no idea how much I would have to pull from all the things that i had learned until that fateful day in February of 2007. I returned from lunch to find a highway patrolman at my office. He informed me that my husband had been killed instantly in a 3 vehicle accident , at that moment my world as I knew it would no longer look , feel or be the same.
Every human will experience grief in their lifetime. There is no way to avoid it . Death is as much a part of life as birth. Each of us will cope with grief differently and we will grieve different losses in different ways. I knew this and had been teaching grief and loss for many years. This was not my first significant loss , we lost our first child and that was one of the hardest things i ever experienced. Losing my husband was so different , and all I could think is How am I ever going to get through this.
We do of course, make it through, with a lot of tears, faith and prayers. The support that your friends and family lend during your time of loss is so significant and I remember how thankful I was that there was so many there for me. But as the first few days are full with planning , services and friends, the days become weeks of lonely nights , the weeks become months of reality that your loved one is not coming back and months become years of remembering how your life used to be. Not all of us grieve alike, it takes longer for some than others and the behavior we exhibit during that time may not always meet the expectations of everyone else. But, we must do it in our own way, in our own time, and work through this process with the coping skills that we have at that time.
I remember hearing about the gossip the OLD ladies in town were saying about me, during the grief process. It amazed me that these supposedly christian ladies, who did not even know me until after my husband died, would even have an opinion about what I should be doing when, where and how. Anger is certainly an all too familiar part of the grief process. Whether your anger is toward your loved one, God, family or who, it is a very normal process that we all have to work through. It angered me greatly that these women and some men, in our small community would even have such negative comments and surely some of them had an idea of the pain that I was experiencing. But through it all I had faith that God knew exactly what he was doing and that in time I would be able to see his plan for me and my daughter.
It is four years later and I would love to tell you that all is forgotten , but of course it's not. I still grieve everyday, not with the pain that I had early on, and certainly with the reality that my life as I knew it has completely changed, but with my faith in God , I move forward and try my best to enjoy everyday, that I know I am blessed to experience.
Through this Blog I hope that others will be able to express their different degrees of grief, give heartfelt advice to others on how to muddle through the first year and I sincerely hope that we all will be able to smile and move forward by discussing our feelings on this subject.
Remember when it seems that everyone else has forgotten , is when you need someone to listen...I promise that you will always be heard here.
