DEATH OF A PARTNER

I would like to take you on a journey.  It is a journey I took alone.  I thought everyone was watching and understood but I’ve realised that it really was a quiet journey between God and me and maybe not as many people as I thought were watching.  So I want to share it with you.

My story is about letting my husband go.  He died of lung cancer in 2008 at the age of 35.  We had been childhood sweethearts, married at the age of 19 and 21, and he died 13 and half years later.

Two years later I married my new husband and most of my friends were delighted for me, but not all of them.  I know two years may seem to be a short amount of time to mourn the loss of my childhood sweetheart and husband, but for me it didn’t feel so short.  Not long after my first husband died there were a couple of guys who started to pay attention to me and wanted to go out on dates.  A good friend asked me if I had given myself a set time for mourning.  I hadn’t, but I made a decision then to give myself a year before I would go on any dates or start a relationship.  I felt like it would help to have that decision made in my head and it would give me a simple answer if anyone asked.  I also felt it would help me to know there was a time to end the mourning.  Somehow it felt good to give myself permission to stop mourning at some point.

 

A year may seem like a short time to some, but to me:

That was going to bed alone 365 times.

It was waking up in the night not being able to remember if my husband was alive or dead and then going over the whole traumatic experience again in my head to help me get back to reality countless times.

It was millions of tears alone, with only God to talk to.

It was many packets of Clicks Deluxe tissues carried around in my bag to catch those tears.

It was saying, “No, I’m not married, I’m widowed” to every new person I met.

It was eating breakfast alone about 200 times (sometimes I had company and sometimes it was easier to skip it all together).

It was thinking, almost on a daily basis at first, “Oh, I must tell my husband...” and then remembering that I could never do that again.

It was having 100’s of bad dreams in the night and no-one to hold me.

It was 52 trips to church alone, keeping only one chair when I went up on stage to play in the worship team.

It was 20 flute solo’s with no-one to say, “Well done” with his eyes.

It was about 125 days of going to work (because I was given quite a lot of time off) with no-one to talk to until I got there.

It was making about 1000 decisions about money, pets, travel, work, birthday presents, the car, tools, shopping, insurance, clothes etc. etc. etc. with no-one to help.

It was four weddings attended alone, wondering if the newly married couple really knew what “in sickness and in health” could mean.

It was 8760 hours of not being whistled for (that was how my husband used to call me).

It was 1000’s of minutes repeating over and over again, “God has not given me a spirit of fear but a spirit of love, power and a sound mind” when my heart was racing in the middle of the night, afraid of burglars.

It was 365 days of no-one saying “Bless you” when I sneezed.

It was about 125 days of work with a very difficult colleague and no-one to come home to and offload on.

It was 365 days of not being kissed or held.

It was 8760 hours of discovering a depth of loneliness I had never experienced before.

In the first few days and weeks it was an hour-by-hour reminding of myself, “God’s got me and I won’t feel this way forever”.  At least that’s what people told me and I wanted to believe them even if I didn’t think it was true.

It was a year of feeling like my guts had been ripped out leaving a big empty hole in the middle of me.

It was 365 days of wishing I could just go home, but nowhere felt like home anymore.

It was hundreds of visitors to entertain alone.

It was about 50 trays of coffee brought all the way from the kitchen to the coffee table with no-one offering to take it from me.

It was daily wearing a wedding ring that I wished meant there was a husband to go home to.

It was 12 salaries that had to get me to the end of the month without help.

It was 6 months of looking at clothes that would never be worn again (and then I packed them away).

It was meeting new people who would never know me as “Mr & Mrs …”.

It was signing 12 birthday cards and 4 wedding cards “Love Mrs …” instead of “Love Mr & Mrs …”

It was endless hours in bed, in the car, in the mountains, on a motorbike and at the beach reminding myself that God alone is enough for me.

 

So when someone says that a year is not a very long time, our perspectives are probably rather different.

The sense of loss from losing my husband was enormous.  I remember breaking the handle off a mug that my Grandpa (who is also dead) gave me.  My brother-in-law was about to throw it away and I freaked out!  I just didn’t want to lose anything else, even a silly sentimental old mug.  My friend seemed to “get it” and willingly glued the pieces back together for me.

I made good use of the grace people give you shortly after losing someone so close, and cried openly if I knew it was going to take a lot of energy to stop the tears from coming.  I even remember one time some close friends were over for dinner and I’d been on the phone to one of my best friends, so I was crying.  I came to the table still crying and just said, “I’m crying tonight, can’t help it” and one of my friends at the table said, “That’s ok”, took my hand, said grace, and we carried on with dinner, while I cried.  My mourning was open for people to see if they were nearby.  I carried tissues everywhere, talked when I needed to and cried at liberty.

I think at one point my tears even gave my mom-in-law the permission she needed to cry.  She had held back her tears for months and tried to stay strong for my father-in-law.  One day, when we were alone in my office the tears came, and with them a small sense of relief for her.

The thing with losing a spouse is that you don’t want to cheat on them or betray them.  For me it was especially real because we had been through a very bad patch in our marriage just before my husband got cancer.  We had got our marriage back together and the last 6 months of my husband’s life had been our most precious.  When he died we were more in love than ever.  Neither of us had any regrets or things left unsaid.  And so the temptation for me was to “stay true” to him by not moving on, continuously mourning, making sure I cried at the right times so people knew I was sad and missed him.  Officially there are no rules to mourning, but I learnt that people have rules and some of them you can ignore and just get on with it.  But some of them, for the love of the people who believe those rules, you choose to follow.  At times I even felt I had to take a step back in my mourning process so I could keep pace with my friends (at other times I felt I needed to catch up!).  And it’s not bad, I don’t regret doing that, because mourning may hurt but it’s not harmful.  I also felt so privileged to have such precious friends who walked this road with me.

The first liberating factor for me came just days after my husband died.  I dreamt that I saw him.  It was so vivid that it felt real.  He was standing in front of me in his shorts and no shirt.  He was all back to normal, no chemo hair loss, no cortisone-podgy body, he was tanned and fit... and smiling.  And he just said to me, “I’m fine, I’m fine!” in such a reassuring way.  I woke up with such peace, knowing that he really is fine with Jesus and I don’t need to ever worry about him.

The real revelation happened on his birthday though.  I had taken the day off work and decided to go to the mountains and just spend some time with God.  That was always the easiest.  God didn’t expect me to cry, or expect me not to cry or want me to behave in any certain way.  So I knew I could just be me, alone with God on the mountain.  I bought three gold helium balloons to take with me.  I had planned to release them after spending some time reading and praying and just being with God.  While I was sitting there holding my balloons I noticed how they were tugging at the ribbons.  The wind was blowing them and making them bump together making a drumming noise.  For a little while I just enjoyed the sound they made beating together but then I realised that they seemed to be straining to be set free.  So instead of trying to anchor them down so I could read my Bible, I let them go.  It was suddenly quiet, and they looked so beautiful floating away into the sun.  It was such a good analogy for me.  I think it was God showing me that it was ok to let my husband go.  He is in Heaven and doesn’t want to come back.  That was a real revelation for me, like the balloons tugging at the ribbons; a part of us all longs for Heaven and it kind of tugs at us to come “home”.  And like the balloons floating up and away, I realised that even if God gave my husband the option to come back (and be with me) he would choose not to.  He really would!  He wouldn’t come back to me even if he could!  It was a really good, healing day for me.

 

That’s when I knew it was going to be ok to find someone new.  Not that there was anyone yet, but I knew that God had healed a part of my heart that I would need for someone else that day.