Please Rewind

     I want my Bob back.  I want to wake up in the morning and to end every day wrapped in each other's arms.  I want to see the smile on his face, the brightness in his eyes.  I want to watch him glide across snow again, or stride blissfully up a mountain trail.  I want to feel his quiet, loving presence in our home. I want all our togetherness again, everything we shared.  I want it all back.  My head knows it's not going to happen, but, oh, how my heart aches for my head to be wrong.

A Poem

Today

Only a periphery of blue

outlines the cloud-heavy sky

matching

the sorrow-laden quilt 

over my heart--

edged with hope

and sweet memories of my Love.

Loss within Loss

     After Bob's death, a dear friend sent me a book of daily readings, Healing After Loss.  The reflection I read today touched me deeply, especially this part:

    

  "We know full well that our loved one has died.  Do we recognize that in that death a part

of us has died too?

     The part of us that lived in our relationship to that person alive in the world has died.

     The part of us that lived in expectation of a future on earth together has died.

     The part of us that enjoyed the commonality of shared memories has died.

     This is a lot to lose, and perhaps it will be easier to accept the effect of our loved one's dying if we acknowledge the profound event this is in our life, too."

     These words clarified for me what I have been experiencing without realizing it.  It's not just the loss of Bob, which is hard enough, but also the loss of a huge part of myself--the "me" in relationship to him, sharing life, grand kids, plans, hikes, trips, family news and events, friendships--sharing everything. The person I have been for the past 30+ years has been in partnership with Bob.  As one friend wrote, we were "Bob and Caryl"; that was our couple identity.  But that couple died with Bob. Now I am only Caryl again, solo--no longer a couple, a team, a partnership.  For me, the effect of this is much more profound than my words can convey.  No wonder I feel like I am "at a loss" for a sense of direction at times.  I am lost in a very real way.  I have lost my identity along with losing Bob, and losing my sense of self means I need to re-find, re-discover, maybe even re-create who I am.  

     Somehow it's comforting to recognize this loss.  It helps me understand a bit better that there is more to this grief that comes from losing my life's partner, my best friend. The couple we were has vanished just as surely as Bob himself is gone.  Now even though I am in many ways the same person, I am also no longer that person.  It helps a little to reflect back on our life together, to remember that when we were newly-weds, each of us had to become someone new, then, too.  Just as it took time to let go of being self-contained individuals in order to "marry" our lives, so it will take time to let go of the person who was "Bob's other half" in order to become comfortable as a person "flying solo" again.  In the meantime, I hope that my new awareness of this additional loss will somehow make it easier to ride the waves of grief when they come.  Who knew that at 70 years old one might need to once again answer the question "Who am I?"