A Message - 6/11/08

I’ve been a widow for three weeks today.  Funny how time keeps moving away from that moment of ultimate loss.  A part of me is still there sitting by the bed in the hospice center.  I can still hear the silence and feel the warmth of his hand.  The rest of me is left to pick up the pieces of my life and move on with the flow of time.  Yesterday I took my Mother out for dinner to celebrate her 84^th birthday.  I spend days going through papers, notifying financial institutions of his passing, filling out forms, and talking to strangers on the phone who express their condolences.  One woman even apologized for my loss, twice.  Did she have something to do with the cancer or was she just unaware that she was choosing the wrong word?  I’ve become so aware that the words people say to those grieving can ring as hollow and meaningless as a bell in the wilderness.  They mean well, but they can’t begin to plumb the depths.  Even if they themselves have suffered every kind of loss, they have not experienced your loss in your way.  How could they?  They haven’t lived with and loved as you have.  They haven’t breathed your same air.

I find myself sleeping on his side of the bed.  There is a comfort in that.   I can’t eat at the kitchen table.  It just feels too lonely there where we always ate together.  I only cook once a week which will last several days and then I’ll eat salads or graze on vegetables and hard boiled eggs.

Next week my Granddaughter will be out of school for the summer and will be here with me during the week.  I suppose I’ll have to start cooking more regularly again, living more regularly again.

On the night of June 2^nd at 1:37 in the morning, I was lying awake.  I heard a voice very loudly in my left ear.  The voice said “I’m back home now.”  It didn’t frighten me, but it did startle me.  I didn’t recognize the voice.  It seemed male.  I think it was Warren letting me know that he’d made it to the other side.  The last week of his life I talked to him a lot about going home.  The card I chose for the funeral home prayer card said “Going Home”.  I’m grateful for the message.

(The picture is Warren in 1980.)