Years ago, I thought I’d be settled by now. I thought I’d have found my way. I thought, well, I thought. I imagined. I had no idea how life would be, so I thought it’d be different by now. The slate was blank again and plans were erased. It was up to me to figure out which direction to head, but here I sit many years later feeling unsettled…still.
This is not to say I haven’t moved toward something. I have. I have come along way from the night when I watched him die. I have moved through the moments of thinking that I’d never survive as I sat near his lifeless body. As I laid my head on his chest to hear nothing…that strong heart stopped for good…I thought I would stop breathing too. I thought that I would evaporate or disintegrate. I was grateful that his illness had ended, but never, ever grateful that it meant he would end too…along with him, we ended forever…leaving me feeling completely unsettled.
He wasn’t perfect, we weren’t perfect, nothing is ever perfect, but here’s the thing…he was there for me. He loved me, he stuck with me even when I was a bitch. He stuck with me when I was wonderful. He was there when I was just average…which is what am most days. He was there…and then he wasn’t. I was alone again.
I have been alone until very recently. Even now, though not completely alone, I am alone most the time…the man who bravely stepped in, lives in another state. Sometimes I like that…sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I feel satisfied, sometimes I feel unsettled. We are still getting to know each other. Sometimes, I want more, sometimes I can’t imagine more.
Relationships are so tricky. I had forgotten this. I had bought into my happily ever after with Dave. We had promised. We had each other’s back. We were there for each other…until he wasn’t there for me anymore and then I was alone, unsettled. I have tried many different things…I moved into a new home, I’ve tried different jobs, I’ve tried new hobbies, I reflect, I set goals, I meet my goals, I try to find that peace, but then all I want to do is move the furniture around again because it just doesn’t feel right. I want it to feel right again…maybe I’m asking too much?
Sometimes I think that I have some life lesson to learn. I think that this is an opportunity to be more comfortable with me, more competent, more independent (if there is such a thing), and that I need to be alone to learn this…either I am not proficient at learning this lesson in a timely fashion…or I’m just wrong.
I can’t stand all this freedom
I’ve been here before
and it’s such a big bore
You’re all I ever needed
If you’d only walk through my door~
Sheryl Crow, Drunk with the Thought of You
Or, maybe I’m just unsettled.
I keep hoping though. Is that crazy? Most days I think it is. It really is crazy to have found someone to love and who loved me…when I think of the ratios…the failed relationships verses the successful ones…I really don’t have that great a track record…I just really have that one. I had many failed attempts at monogamy…even a previous failed marriage…how, who, why would anyone ever want to step in now?
My heart, while it is healing and open, has been through the ringer and I find it hard to trust. It’s hard to believe that anyone would want into my crazy and even harder to believe they might want to stay. Although I’d like to remain hopeful…I think the numbers speak for themselves. I think that those who find love again after great heartache are heroes. They have a courage, an ability to risk hurt again, they can put it out there even when rejection is a very real thing…maybe even the more common thing. I’m not sure I have the courage anymore. I want to be brave, but the doubt moves in…
I want to have courage. I want to trust. I want…but here I sit…unsettled still.
Tags: Christine Thiele, healing, hope, sole parent, surviving, unsettled, widow
Christine, I felt sadness as I read your story. Maybe you have not yet fully gotten over your late husband. I understand how you feel. It’s really hard and painful to lose someone you love. I have experienced the same 5 years ago when my husband died. It was hard for me and it felt like I could no longer love again. But don’t worry, a new love will come to you at the right time. I want to share with you a great application within Facebook that I found. It’s called Evertalk. It allows to create a separate space within Facebook for our loved ones who passed away to remember them and celebrate their lives. I have done this for my husband and it helped me a lot in dealing with the pain of his loss. Anyways, I wanted to pass along the recommendation to check out Evertalk within Facebook. Their web site is http://www.everta.lk
Hope this helps Christine.
I can relate to you Christine. It was hard for me too when I lost my dear husband in 2004. I also thought that I would not be able to love again. But do not lose hope, in time you will find another person who will make your heart beat once more. I recently found mine. I hope you find yours too. Thanks for the heads up on the Evertalk page Christine.
Christina & Jacklyn, Thank you for your recommendations and kind words. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over loving my husband, but will continue to keep my heart open. Best wishes to both of you on your journeys also.
Christine
I lost my husband December of 2010. I feel completely lost some days. I know i don’t want to be alone sometimes but how do you love again? We were together for over 17yrs… how do i date, how do i kiss without crying? How do i go on.
Oh Molly, I am so, so sorry for your loss. I too thought those very same thoughts. Your loss is so recent. I went past seven years before I was able to date, kiss, be with someone else. That was my time frame and the time was right for me when it happened and the man was very kind and aware of my story. We are all different and our needs will change over time. Please, hang in there and remember to be gentle with yourself…it is such a difficult journey.
Please accept my expression, for it is really all I have in these days even after nearly 5 years.
It’s going on 5 years for me and I’ve come to realize that I can never be the same.
Natalie was ill most of our marriage. I knew it going in when I was 19, but I loved her too much to walk away from her when the diabetes diagnosis came when she was 18. I knew hospitals and doctors would be part of my life with her, but something so far beyond me commandeered the wheel and steered us together. We kept it on the road for 21 years.
She was the kindest woman I have ever met and this is a struggle I face as I try to move on. The woman I am with now is very different and very kind, but its a different kind. It’s different that shakes the soul when it appears all that was has been wiped out. A puzzle piece of my soul was removed and no matter who, what or where, there will never be that perfect piece to fit that empty space that was removed. That space was built for Natalie and only Natalie. This is how I feel. This is the nature of our soul and it’s intimate and painful interaction with this mysterious world we have been born into. Denying the mystery, the love, the pain and the beauty of it all by simple explanations, or even seeking to find answers, this is no longer acceptable to me. Science, religion, philosophy or any thing we try use as a tool to find an answer to the mystery, can never possibly bring us to the place that surrendering to the mystery brings us to. Surrender is truly the most powerful force in my universe. Love never fails and may be the wind that lifts us higher and above all that once held us down, but surrender is our wings.
I know that when the woman you love dies, when you lose your home, your business, your vehicles and your mother in the short span of a year, it doesn’t just shake you, but it devastates you and all you knew. You begin to realize we do not possess the security or the control we thought we had. I felt death in and around me and it was death that was staring me down. It was death that was forcing me to accept her mortality and my own. I have come to realize that it is this confrontation with mortality that ushers into a new life the ancients and mystics describe as resurrection. Resurrection doesn’t have to be something we experience at some future point, but I believe it is available only as the divine hand turns the dial and it is revealed to us that we are mortals and need a resurrection.
The girls and me saw our lives fall off the foundation of our existence. The shattering that we experienced was into too many slivers to ever reassemble. People around us stood with their hands over their mouths as it all collapsed. Most had no words and that’s ok. They tried to give me money, gift cards, their presence and anything they thought might help us (and them) face the horror that we had been subjected to. Many just didn’t get it and I realize now they weren’t supposed to get it. But a few did and now they are different too.
One woman offered to help me with my girls and she waded through the hell of our catastrophe. My girls were 18, 15, 13 and I had no gas in the tank and not even a tank to put any gas in. I still breakdown when I consider that time. Julie decided she’d take this on but neither of us knew just how steep the terrain of grieving, death, financial loss, 4 teenage girls, a blended family and the near impossibility of “recovery” would be. We don’t recover, we resurrect into something new, but I won’t go there now.
I must insist that if you believe you are prepared for the loss of your spouse, you are either a spiritual master of improvisation or maybe just distracted by the many things we fill our lives with that delay the inevitable.
I awoke on her couch one morning in a foreign country and saw the tent trailer in her back yard that my daughters were sleeping in. (Don’t ask me how I ended up in a foreign country—a remote island for that matter, but someday I hope to find someone to help me write this story). “What happened to my life” was the sigh-filled whimper that would often find its way over my tongue and into my day each morning. “God, I miss her.” The pain was so severe, the memories so thick, the conditioning of my soul so precise—to her voice, her rhythm, her smell, her heartbeat that I’II tell you with all sincerity that there must not be—there can not be!— any greater pain to be experienced by our soul. The conditioning of the human soul to another is one of the most complex mysteries of human experience and I have found few parallels that can ever explain what happened to me in losing Natalie.
In the book of Genesis, we are shown a picture of a complete man, Adam, who is put to sleep by God. While under divine anesthesia, Adam is fragmented and his soul, Eve, is taken from his inner world and placed into his outer world. He now can see his soul, once hidden from him but now visible, beautiful and yet innocent and naive. It is here the fall begins as his soul is beckoned away from the only world they knew, to a new world that promised something greater. It wasn’t long before Adam’s soul had left him and their paradise for something that appeared to better. In a way I understand what happened to Adam because my soul was also ripped from me and left my world. But I am awakening to the reality of it all. http://isleofexile.blogspot.ca/2011/02/the-agony-of-fragmented-soul.html
I thought it was us, baby, but it was you
I look back upon it all
Our lives together
And the nightmare begins
When I realize
It was your love that kept me going
Your love that stabilized
Now you’re gone
I’m a mess
And the only hope I know
Any of us have
Is resurrection
Facing death and experiencing resurrection is the only hope any of us have. And since we have no control over either, I am hopeful that there is a love greater than ourselves which will orchestrate this mystery for us. This is not done TO us, but FOR us!