If pain isn't linear, and grief isn't circular, then who can say healing actually exists?The worst, just as the best, technically, can still be "yet to come."
I wonder why there is a specific word for a wife who has lost a husband, and a husband who has lost a wife - a widow and a widower. I have never thought about that before, let alone cared about it. There isn't a word that I know of for a mother who has lost a son; a sister who has lost a brother; a person who has lost a best friend. Not even two people who are engaged to be married. And yet, there is a specific word for a married couple who has lost a spouse. As if they would carry more weight than all other relationships, regardless of the merit of their marriage.
Why?
Now that I am a widow, it defines precisely and legally what - or whom - I have lost. Who has died. Why I grieve. Why I am absent-minded. Why I behave oddly. Maybe acting nonchalantly. It appears that being crowned a widow suddenly gives me a license to do all of that without facing criticism.
What if, I want to be known that the person who died is actually more than just a person commonly known as "husband?" What if he is so much more, so much bigger, so much, well, whatever else. Why isn't there a name for it? I want to have a name for it, be called something else, and STILL have the license to grieve deeply. To behave oddly. To be absent minded. Not just because I have lost a husband. But so much more. To be fair, losing a husband, alone, is already more than I can bear.
What if I just want to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while. What if I don't want to move forward. What if progress is actually just an illusion of the mind? But seriously. Since nothing is linear or circular, and everything is multi-dimensional, what if healing is all but a hoax!?
All the rhetorical questions with no answers. Unfortunately, I remember all too vividly: we were used to getting no answers.
I know no grief, until now.
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