I don’t want to feel this way again…it’s too soon.

Don’t want to feel what again?

Grief

Grief is different for everyone and every person handles it differently. For me, I feel like I am in a fog…my thoughts flit here and there…I put something down…and a few minutes later I can’t find it. That makes me feel like I am loosing my mind. I’m not, it is just grief.

Yesterday I went to my office to print some insurance forms, birth certificates,our marriage license on a good copier to send into the state so Mike’s pension could get started. I was really careful and Carrie was great in helping me make good copies. I packaged them all together and needed one more bit of information.

I waited about two hours for the information to arrive…but it didn’t so I left.

Sure enough the call came as I was driving home.

When I walked in my garage door I went to open the folder so I could mail all the documents.

I couldn’t find it.

I just had it.

Panic set in…then tears.

“How could I have lost all those papers when all I did was walked to the car from my office,” I cried out to Christa.

She calmed me down,called my office and Rick one of my team members was still there. He looked around and sure enough found it, laying on my desk. My short-term memory is shot.

A friend called yesterday and wanted to know if I had done “anything fun”?

“Seriously? No, and I am not really looking for any fun, I’m barely able to get through each day.”

Weekend of July 4th

We have a small lake cottage about 45 minutes from our home and as a family we have so many wonderful memories up there playing and relaxing. Mike counted the days from Sept 1st (when school started) until June of each year when it was finished.

He told me one time,”the happiest day of my life is when we are driving to the lake house to open it up for the summer, and the saddest is when we are driving back Labor Day weekend.”

Only this year he died two days before that happiest day.

My brother and sister-in-law (Bud and Janet) came up from Paducah for the weekend and I was so glad.

When you have been married for 35 years, certain “chores” become “yours” and “theirs,” in the marriage relationship. One of Mike’s was getting the jet ski’s in the water, filling the tanks, and charging the batteries.

This time it fell to me and suddenly I realized I didn’t  know a thing about “any”of it. I resented he left me…to handle all of it. My plate was full just cleaning the cottage, filling it with food…and taking care of all “my jobs”.

 

It goes without saying but I will anyway, I know Jamie, “Lilly Bear” and Mike are all having a jolly ole’ time in heaven. But, well…it is not the same for those left behind to wait for our time to come home.

Being a Christian

Being a Christian who believes in the after-life and heaven, doesn’t stop you from feeling sad, mad, distraught, in a fog, or fearful. We experience the same awful emotions everyone does when someone they love intensely dies. Yet in the midst of the sad emotions of grief, we do grieve with a hope knowing that this life is not the end.

Life on this present earth is short and eternity lasts forever.

My family knows we will all be re-united again because we have a relationship with our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ. We will all live together on the new earth.

Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” John 14:1-4

Grief is a struggle…some call it a journey. A journey one is not prepared for emotionally but yet a journey we will all take during our earthly lives.

There is no cure for grief, you just have to get through it.

People say,”life goes on,”a cliche’ at best. Yet when the death of someone you love happens, life as you know it does not go on. It stops; then It changes.

Grief is hard, I did not want to experience it again…ever. And yet I am…too soon.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us.” Romans 8:18