Last night, I was listening to a couple of women talk about grief on a podcast. They are two women from the group Grief Anonymous. One of the women is a widow and the other is a mom who lost her infant son. Both are terribly hard losses to have to endure. They were talking about embracing your new authentic self. They said a couple of things that resonated with me, and I wanted to share my thoughts.
The ladies stated that there is no shame in moving forward. Survivors shouldn’t feel shame or guilt for learning to live a new life. They said that we aren’t given a choice about these tragic events. Clearly, if we had been given a choice, all of us would have chosen for our loved one to remain with us much longer. That is a no brainer! Right??? I know I would have chosen to keep Jeff with me until the day I die. The problem is that wasn’t an option.
I have heard many grieving people, including myself, talk about survivor's guilt. Some feel guilty simply because they are still here. They feel guilty if they are out in public with friends and having a good time because their loved one can’t do that anymore. Many have talked about the shoulda, woulda, couldas. I have worked through most of my guilt, but it wasn’t easy. I have felt guilty for having a good time with family and friends, and I also felt guilty for not realizing how unhappy/stressed that Jeff truly was. I shoulda told him more often that I loved him and was here for him. I felt guilty for not realizing that the last hug he gave me was actually a good-bye hug. I wish I coulda seen in his eyes that morning just how badly things were going to go that day. If I coulda, Lord knows I woulda stopped him in his tracks. You know what though? Shoulda, woulda, couldas don’t get you anywhere. Doing that to yourself doesn’t solve a single thing. It only causes more pain. I can’t go back and get Jeff to see that he could tell me anything. There is no reverse button on life. I can’t just time travel back and show him just how much I care.
Plus, I am pretty sure that he already knew all of that. For the last couple weeks of Jeff’s life, he had been sick. He even took off work to sleep, which was so unusual. He rarely ever missed work. I was so afraid he had pneumonia, and I couldn’t get him to go to the doctor. I was such a worry wart that, one of the nights just days before he died, I actually slept on the couch to be near him as he slept in his chair. I remember waking up to him coughing and asking him if he wanted a drink. He smiled at me and told me that he had some water, and then he took a sip. So, like I said, I am pretty sure he knew I would have done anything in my power to help him...physically, emotionally, spiritually. But that is the problem. Jeff made sure to not let me see what was really going on with him. I would ask all the time how work was, but I now know that for years there was so much he didn’t tell me. If I had known, I coulda...never mind. That way of thinking is pointless.
Another thing the ladies said was just a simple but profound question really. They stated that grieving people needed to ask themselves if they are going to allow the loss of their loved one to define their life or refine their life? I’ve said before that I don’t want Jeff’s death to define me. I don’t want to simply be thought of as a widow. I am more than that. Most definitely I want the loss of him to refine me. If you refine something, you make it better. Who wouldn’t want to be better? I want to move forward with Jeff and work to make my life, and the lives of those around me, better. I want to take our love and the beautiful parts of the life we shared together and move forward finding and spreading joy.
What are your thoughts on these things? Have you ever struggled with survivor’s guilt? Has your brain done the woulda, shoulda, coulda thing? Have you allowed the loss of a loved one to define you or refine you? I’d love to hear from you!
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