Most of the people here never knew my wife. They never knew me as a married man. And they were not around as I went through the hardest time of my life after Kathy died. I want to from time to time share some thoughts on grieving. Grieving is simply the proof of your love. If you loved that person you will grieve their death. Here are some thoughts on grieving the death of your spouse that I have gleaned from listening to other people's stories.
The death of a spouse leaves us suspended between a past that is longed for and a future that is unclear.
Grieving leaves us feeling numb. We function like dazed and confused people barely able to think straight and baffled by our own emotions. We find it hard to remember what happened or what we did in those chaotic early days after their death. We cry until we have no more tears left to shed.
Death turns us from couples with plans and dreams to a single person who has become plan-less and dreamless. We go from having a reason to live to what one person described as a monotonous emptiness.
Death requires us to make decisions that we have no idea what to do or how to do it.
Time moves differently for the grieving survivor. To you it may be 6 months. To them it is the first Christmas without their spouse.
Death forces us to adjust to being reluctantly single. We look single but we still feel married.
Not all help is helpful. Most cliché or scripture based words are hurtful. Remember Job's comforters.
Grieving people do not want you to fix them. They want you to love them, to visit them, to call them.
The burden to minister to a surviving spouse is not on the grieving spouse, it is on the rest of us.
That is all I have today. I will not write on this often. But you will find that this is an area that I know a lot about. And I am willing to share what I know with you.
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