Well, I’m back after a week of the latest virus. As I’ve been catching up, I found myself using a particular phrase, “back to the land of the living.” Ironic, since this is the time of the year, the end of May that my husband Jim passed away. My body remembers before the rest of me – I begin to feel down, and little things make me want to cry(more than usual, even) and this ache rises up – I stop and ask myself, “What has gotten in to you Katie!!” Then I answer(yes, it’s only polite) “Oh, Jim, remember? Of course.” He’s now gone, 4-times as long as we were together, so little time. Shouldn’t it be easier? Grief is like that. Apparently gone, then rising again.
So, then I just remember, how we loved just to sit together on the porch & talk & talk, how hard he worked, how much he respected & believed in me, how he liked to hear me sing in the car, how he’d tell me silly stories, when I didn’t think I could sleep, and most of all how much I loved him. Yes, I cry, over all we lost and all we might have had, but I remember too that I would do all over again. At 50 something I don’t know, if a man’s love is a blessing the Lord will send me, now. I do know, that God won’t let me go to waste! I now call those first few years after Jim’s passing, “an extended hiatus” — Webster defines hiatus: n. A gap or interruption in space, time, or discontinuity; a break.
As soon as I first said it I new it was just that, I’m ME again, only better because of everything. Grief is like that too, you learn to live with it and beyond it and you’re stronger. And now I’m back to land of the living, and where there’s work to be done, friendships to be developed, family to be nutured and things to be said!
Meryl Runion in her blog “…I just knew there were a hundred things I wish I had said to him while I still had the chance. I just knew something had gone horribly wrong, and I couldn’t change it. I just knew I didn’t ever want to find myself in that kind of darkness again.I had been living in a land of make-believe. I didn’t want to see, but I knew I had to. I hit the wall and my eyes were being forced open. Not that I woke-up all at once in that moment. I was in too much shock to see what was right in front of me all at once.
If you’ve already had your wake-up call, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve already had your wake-up call, you’ve learned that the only way out is to walk straight through things you would rather avoid with an open heart and mind and honest communication. It may be too alarming to face it all at once – after all, that’s why you would rather avoid it. But if you don’t find the truth, it will find you.
If you haven’t had your wake-up call, I hope I can be your wake-up call. It’s a lot easier if you open your eyes and start telling the truth before you and the wall collide.”
Beautifully put and I agree wholeheartedly!
