As widows and widowers I believe forgiveness is a big part of coming through grief

• Forgiving yourself. I spent so much time wishing that I had done things differently. That I had prioritised family more than work, not that this was deliberate but I look back wishing that I had enjoyed more time at home rather than feeling tired alot. I realise now that the time has gone, that I did the best that I could, that he worshipped me and loved me for my energy with work.
• Forgiving the world for taking him from me. I realise that there is no logic why the good people are taken from us, just that death happens…..and we never know when, we never know where and that I must accept that it was just his time.
• Forgiving him. This sounds harsh and yet I have felt angry that he left me alone…..It wasn’t really anger, it was hurt because I loved “our love” and just wished that we could still be together.

Forgiveness is hard and yet to move on in grief you need to find it in your heart to forgive….after all what is the alternative to live a bitter life? That wouldn’t me, it wouldn’t be the person that my loved one wanted in his life. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting - it just means letting go of the negative and keeping the positive.

This week saw the world lose Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, two people who were very prominent entertainers during my teenage years. Whenever someone famous dies I always have mixed emotions

1. The sense of loss of their genius - the sense that we will miss their brilliance and of course just the utmost feelings for their family.
2. Confusion how the world can focus on the death of one person, when each day people lose people their love and face death without the sympathy or empathy of the world.

Death is such a private feeling and yet when someone famous dies..the grief is forced to be so public. I have no idea how families cope with the world looking at them….but then I wonder whether it may help them? When I suffered my loss I wanted to talk about how great they were….maybe, just maybe the world grieving and talking may help your loss? What do you think?

..is that if we allow pain to change us for the worse than the loss has been in vain. Any change in your life will feel uncomfortable and none more so than grief. However, life is all about evolution - indeed in a way death is about evolution, death is required for life to continue on this wonderful planet.

We can’t stop death as much as we would all want to….I think that is one of the hardest things to come to terms with….but death is bad enough, without us allowing the loss to change us into a worse human being or a human being who doesn’t live for the moment.

Why do I write this today? Well I read a note in a card today from my loved one. He wrote

“We will never know how how much time we will have to enjoy our love, lets make sure that each day, each hour, each second is not wasted”

He may be gone - I can’t change that….but those words live on. I, myself, do not know how much time I have….and so I keep telling myself that as hard as it feels…lets not waste it.…lets be the person we want the world to see rather than the person grief can make us become.

Death is something that I struggle to comprehend, I mean if you are not lviing what happens? I know people with faith have answers but somehow I struggle to come to terms with the possibilities. I was reading the other day this

Death is natural. Nothing natural can be detrimental.
Death is rest. Rest is strength in disguise for a further adventure.

At the present state of human evolution, to conquer Death may be an impossibility.
But to overcome the fear of death is not only practicability, but inevitability.

Death is normally the sign that the soul, under the particular circumstances,
has exhausted the possibilities of its progress in a particular body.

This is an excerpt from Sri Chinmoy and Eternity Breath. I am not sure whether I fear death, I am sure that it is a natural part of living…..but maybe that last paragraph serves my hope - that death is not a cutting short of life.

Coronation Street is the most popular soap in the UK and William Roache one of the longest serving actors. He recently lost his wife, quite suddenly and when interviewed about his grief he said

“I’ve found the grieving process is not a straight line, it’s variable. You have a sort of numbness to begin with - a terrible grief - then great waves.”

“You have periods when you feel totally normal. It’s almost callous, as if life is just going on without Sara, and then of course it hits you on the back of the neck.”

“I know that we will be together again one day. That much I’m sure of. Sara was everything to me and no one could replace her - I would never want that.”

Callous is not a word that I have ever used, maybe for me because death at the end of the day is a normal part of life. However I so understand what he means. Your mind, your soul, your body….all have to learn to surf that dangerous wave of grief.

Lance Armstrong has shown us all how to conquer our fears, how to face what life has thrown at us and how to beat pain as well as cancer. I have been touched by the pain people are feeling over these weeks as anniversaries of our loved ones death appear on the calendar.

I saw this quote from Lance Armstrong and thought it might helps us all realise that although the pain of loss is always there, that pain is like a flowing roller coaster. We have a choice…we can give into that pain, or we can fight it and use it as motivation for our future happiness. As Lance says

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute or an hour, or a day, or a year but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quite it will last forever”

The comments to Don’t Forget the Good Times really touched my heart. Anniversaries are tough and I thought I would share how I cope…as I said in my comment to the blog post

“Pain makes me realise my heart is still alive, it is still feeling….pain means that the love is still alive.”

So often during bereavement you can feel numb, you can feel, well actually not feel anything. It was my Nana who taught me something about heartache. She said “Heartache takes away the numbness. Heartache means that your heart is alive and still capable of loving. Heartache means that your love has not died with their death. Heartache should be embraced over the years as it is a positive sign that your love endures, and your heart is learning to love again”

At the time I thought this was daft! But now I think I believe in this idea. Now as the pain increases I smile as I don’t feel the hurt, I try and feel the love. I am not sure if this will help - but always remember we are all here for you.

The memory that remains so etched on my mind are those final hours, which I can understand. However, as widows and widowers we need to look past the pain so that the painful end to our shared life, doesn’t define our love. When you think about it, you will have been with your partner for years, months, weeks in which we shared laughs and love so intense. Yet we can lose all those happy times because of the pain of their death.

So the easy thing is to say remember the happier times…yet that brings pain too as you ache for those times still to be possible!

It is so strange….almost it is easier to cope with the pain of the death than the pain of the happy memories!

Maybe the trick in grief is to balance the two - coping with the pain of loss with the memories of the happier times?

When faced with death it makes you think long and hard about life. What is life about? This is a question that continuously makes me think long and hard.

The more that I think, the more I believe that life is not about making a living, it is greater than that….it is about creating a lifelong legacy. Of course we need money to feed some basic needs, but we need love more….we need to live more….And when you think about it, we may have lost our love…but that is the person NOT the feeling.

When you meet people who are infectious in their happiness or their contentedness….what is it that they have? They have come to terms with living, they have put living at their core of their existence, they don’t fear life…they fear not living.

Faced with seeing first hand, death….that should be our motivation to embrace life.

Widows Quest is wonderful for how people share stories and also thoughts on death and coping with grief. Cindy left a comment to the post Love is Immortal and I thought I would share a quote that she left on the blog

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.”

by Norman Cousins

…I would add that maybe the greatest loss is when we allow what dies inside, to define who we are in the future. Something may die, but remember the body and mind may live…