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Christmas
Holidays are an especially hard time for those who are grieving, and Christmas may be the hardest for those who especially love it. My wife died on October 25, 2010, so Christmas came two months after her death. My three adult children were coming for the holiday with the four young grandchildren we had then,…
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Why Christmas means even more to me as a widow
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…and the most painful, nostalgic, nightmarish time of the year now that my husband is gone. Our hearts and home scream for the void we feel. A voice that once boomed through our home at Christmas as we gathered around the piano is forever silent. The man of…
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Let’s Heal Now!
Widower to Widower with Fred Colby If you are going to survive this hell-on-earth experience and if you want to heal, you are going to have to grow as a father, brother, son, friend, and community member. If you retreat from the world to stew in your grief and anger, that is likely where you…
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Forgiveness
In the old movie, “Love Story,” the lead character says, “Being in love means never needing to say you’re sorry.” In fact, loving another person means often saying you’re sorry unless you are such a perfect person that you never blunder into a thoughtless talk or fail to show sympathy and support when you should.…
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Dealing with the feelings that come up around the holidays
All those feelings that come up around the holidays As the holidays approach, I start hearing from folks in my widowhood community. They talk about the variety of feelings the season is bringing up for them. A widower, with sadness and confusion in his voice, tells me that the holidays were always “her thing”. She…
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Holiday Abyss
Everyone will start to tell you within a week of your wife’s passing that you must steel yourself against the trauma of upcoming special days and holidays. We each are likely to have very different experiences during these special days. Much of your reaction will depend upon how important each of those days was for…
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Fear
I was surprised to find myself fearing some things that I hadn’t feared before, or hadn’t feared as much before she died. When I knew I would be alone in the house for the first time after her death, I was afraid of what my emotional reaction might be. I asked my son and his…
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Widower: Maybe I Don’t Want to Heal!!
Are you floating in a sea of grief with only a life vest of memories and past love keeping you afloat? If you are not careful, that life vest can instead become a weight belt of anger, regret, and fear that drags you down into depression. Grief during the early stages can be both physically…
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How is grief measured?
I believe that our society places measures on things that need to make sense. When it comes to grief, there are no measures that can accurately represent the depth of sorrow a person feels or the path of grief that will be taken. Grief cannot be measured by any known, assumed, discovered, learned, or defined…
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Emotions
Quotation: “You won’t always feel the way you do now.” – C.S. Lewis Emotions sometimes seem more real than reality itself. In a time of grief and loss, our emotions are deeper and stronger than at any other time. We feel that we may burst into tears or maybe even collapse because of these feelings…