SABucksWife
Senior
It is harder to show up when you can't take in what is going on around you the way you used to without it being so difficult. Or without the support of friends and family that are also struggling and grieving or trying to push it under the rug and leave you behind because they are still living the life you shared, but that what was shared - has died or gotten too hard to be around without the connection of Mark. The desire to retreat and hide in your self prescribed safety zone and not acquiesce to the demands of your family obligations is so tangible.
What has changed because of this loss is tolerance, and patience?.and compassion and priorities. Nothing is the same. But when you are used to being in the game and not a spectator there is a need to push forward and not stop living..
The death of Mark has changed every piece, compartment and reality of my daily exsistance in a blink. It took the familiar, ordinary and predictable and truly crippled me and erased all I ever wanted and was expecting to be the rest of my life with the normal hills and valleys and hurdles of living life.
My handicaps are not visually as apparent to the outsider seeing me walking around town. I look fine and appear ok or normal as the word implies. But I am broken inside in a place that is not easy to comprehend unless someone asks a question or tries to share the loss they cannot imagine. This wound is not obvious unless this passerby stops to get to know me and does not run as fast as they might hearing the words my Husband died.
There are friends who are a part of this fate and stayed involved and have been trying to help with the slow process of learning to live again with new eyes, ears, and a broken heart because they do imagine if this was the other way around and then what? And friends that disappeared and could not stay around this and try to understand this is reality and not easy to pick up the pieces and function the same. And I have many new friends that are also in these shoes - as a bereaved wife near and far in cyberspace. We have a new bond and compassion in belonging together like the phrase birds of a feather flock together. or fly alone?.
It turned my daily existence into a struggle to just learn how to integrate and navigate the most basic errand with these new acutely aware senses. Now relearning how what I seem to notice with this grief awareness is a new me but no longer the life that I created or was living in the real world that was being Mark's wife and devoted mother to Antennette and Jeremiah.
The death of my Mark has taught me to live with new eyes, ears, and even taste buds are not the same. This sense of feeling is in a league of its own. A hug is one of the most singular, poignant experiences then and now since his death. You do not want to hurt this badly and there is a yearning for physical closeness that is difficult, almost impossible to explain. I will tell you a hug is one of the most comforting and soothing tangibles that you can possibly imagine. Even from a stranger. Also the physical presence of a trusting and caring friend that just sits close and listens to me talk, not trying to fix it or make it better today.
Doing a new day and looking around what used to be fun, even frivolous is not the same after the world you know stops on a dime.
Grief has over time forced me to learn to see what I can try to look at without falling apart. Or retreating when it got too hard to do and stopping the world and getting off track. Thinking about what was or would of been was normal and natural but as time has marched on it is not the same to be a bystander when I have always been a player in the game of life that jumps in with both feet and makes a huge splash wherever I land!
It was not just second nature to begin to try by taking baby steps to try to do something that before was second nature. In my entire life I have never been afraid to show up and do anything new.
Hearing - really more like over hearing what I can listen to and try to either ignore or handle without causing others any discomfort is probably when I became more comfortable being alone than in my entire life as a people person. Trying to put myself in places that are ok, tolerable, safe or worthy of pushing the fragile legs I stand on and be in the real world and try to navigate and fit in and be doing this thing called living life.
Mark lived every day to the fullest?.we did it together but I was the one who set the balls in motion for us to be this way. Without him it is so much harder.
As Lincoln once said, "I've come to realize that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." I too, believe the power of attitude is innate and what all of you find options in choosing to be better prepared for a future of success and independence and being happy.
It is common knowledge there are 5 senses - taste, touch, hearing, sight, smell. Each one of these senses perceive stimuli originally from outside or inside the body. Often when a person loses one of these senses, for instance sight or hearing, the other senses intensify and become more effective at perceiving the world.
Actually to me, there is another sense we have as human beings. This is the sense of belonging in our observed worlds and not being an outsider or feeling different from those we are around. Belonging in the dictionary is defined as: To be a part of, or connected with; to be appendant or related; to owe allegiance or service. This need of belonging is primal for most of us from as young as when parallel play stops and making friends truly begins. We gravitate to these individuals who are more like us, or because we share something in common that draws us to one another. Or in some cases we dont know immediately what drew us together; but as it unfolds, the connection is not a coincidence at all.
This 6th sense of belonging is significant in each of our daily relationships in one way or another. In our biological families, our daily lives at work or school with our peer groups, and our social circles. Therein, how we connect and need one another thru the chapters of our lives. How we are a family unit. How what is happening to one in our family really impacts the entire family. Each of us here, can relate to this personally on multiple levels.
To me, the death of Mark is a similar unbelievable reality that no one is prepared for having to anticipate fate being cruel when they decide to share a life with someone. Initially there is disbelief or numbness in accepting the reality of our fate and grieving what is not ever going to be what we had envisioned. However resiliency, and time is a part of this process of healing and learning to put one foot in front of the next and try to survive at first, then make inroads to find information and learn what is going to be needed to learn to thrive somehow, some way, some day?.
What has changed because of this loss is tolerance, and patience?.and compassion and priorities. Nothing is the same. But when you are used to being in the game and not a spectator there is a need to push forward and not stop living..
The death of Mark has changed every piece, compartment and reality of my daily exsistance in a blink. It took the familiar, ordinary and predictable and truly crippled me and erased all I ever wanted and was expecting to be the rest of my life with the normal hills and valleys and hurdles of living life.
My handicaps are not visually as apparent to the outsider seeing me walking around town. I look fine and appear ok or normal as the word implies. But I am broken inside in a place that is not easy to comprehend unless someone asks a question or tries to share the loss they cannot imagine. This wound is not obvious unless this passerby stops to get to know me and does not run as fast as they might hearing the words my Husband died.
There are friends who are a part of this fate and stayed involved and have been trying to help with the slow process of learning to live again with new eyes, ears, and a broken heart because they do imagine if this was the other way around and then what? And friends that disappeared and could not stay around this and try to understand this is reality and not easy to pick up the pieces and function the same. And I have many new friends that are also in these shoes - as a bereaved wife near and far in cyberspace. We have a new bond and compassion in belonging together like the phrase birds of a feather flock together. or fly alone?.
It turned my daily existence into a struggle to just learn how to integrate and navigate the most basic errand with these new acutely aware senses. Now relearning how what I seem to notice with this grief awareness is a new me but no longer the life that I created or was living in the real world that was being Mark's wife and devoted mother to Antennette and Jeremiah.
The death of my Mark has taught me to live with new eyes, ears, and even taste buds are not the same. This sense of feeling is in a league of its own. A hug is one of the most singular, poignant experiences then and now since his death. You do not want to hurt this badly and there is a yearning for physical closeness that is difficult, almost impossible to explain. I will tell you a hug is one of the most comforting and soothing tangibles that you can possibly imagine. Even from a stranger. Also the physical presence of a trusting and caring friend that just sits close and listens to me talk, not trying to fix it or make it better today.
Doing a new day and looking around what used to be fun, even frivolous is not the same after the world you know stops on a dime.
Grief has over time forced me to learn to see what I can try to look at without falling apart. Or retreating when it got too hard to do and stopping the world and getting off track. Thinking about what was or would of been was normal and natural but as time has marched on it is not the same to be a bystander when I have always been a player in the game of life that jumps in with both feet and makes a huge splash wherever I land!
It was not just second nature to begin to try by taking baby steps to try to do something that before was second nature. In my entire life I have never been afraid to show up and do anything new.
Hearing - really more like over hearing what I can listen to and try to either ignore or handle without causing others any discomfort is probably when I became more comfortable being alone than in my entire life as a people person. Trying to put myself in places that are ok, tolerable, safe or worthy of pushing the fragile legs I stand on and be in the real world and try to navigate and fit in and be doing this thing called living life.
Mark lived every day to the fullest?.we did it together but I was the one who set the balls in motion for us to be this way. Without him it is so much harder.
As Lincoln once said, "I've come to realize that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." I too, believe the power of attitude is innate and what all of you find options in choosing to be better prepared for a future of success and independence and being happy.
It is common knowledge there are 5 senses - taste, touch, hearing, sight, smell. Each one of these senses perceive stimuli originally from outside or inside the body. Often when a person loses one of these senses, for instance sight or hearing, the other senses intensify and become more effective at perceiving the world.
Actually to me, there is another sense we have as human beings. This is the sense of belonging in our observed worlds and not being an outsider or feeling different from those we are around. Belonging in the dictionary is defined as: To be a part of, or connected with; to be appendant or related; to owe allegiance or service. This need of belonging is primal for most of us from as young as when parallel play stops and making friends truly begins. We gravitate to these individuals who are more like us, or because we share something in common that draws us to one another. Or in some cases we dont know immediately what drew us together; but as it unfolds, the connection is not a coincidence at all.
This 6th sense of belonging is significant in each of our daily relationships in one way or another. In our biological families, our daily lives at work or school with our peer groups, and our social circles. Therein, how we connect and need one another thru the chapters of our lives. How we are a family unit. How what is happening to one in our family really impacts the entire family. Each of us here, can relate to this personally on multiple levels.
To me, the death of Mark is a similar unbelievable reality that no one is prepared for having to anticipate fate being cruel when they decide to share a life with someone. Initially there is disbelief or numbness in accepting the reality of our fate and grieving what is not ever going to be what we had envisioned. However resiliency, and time is a part of this process of healing and learning to put one foot in front of the next and try to survive at first, then make inroads to find information and learn what is going to be needed to learn to thrive somehow, some way, some day?.
