IT’S NOT EASY TO SAY GOODBYE

I’ve never found it easy to say goodbye. Even when I have to, I always feel that whatever has put this person into my life, they have been there for a reason. Trying to understand and learn from them is therefore important for someone who thinks as I do.

Yesterday, feeling I had been neglecting my ‘musical’ friends, I and dozens of people I know turned up at a club we have been going to for many, many years for the matinee performance of our friend’s group.

We all remarked on how many of us were there yesterday all of a sudden. It is a long weekend and the weather is fabulous, but sometimes I think we all feel a need to reconnect at the same time as well.

In meeting again though, we catch up and sometimes get a shock at the same time as we do.

Not one, but two of my friends had died earlier this year. Speaking with their Widows is like reliving my own time in that traumatic first year after. I know what they are going through and they know I know. It is like a club, an association, that no one wants to be part of, but which life has put us in.

I give advice, but only to tell them to acknowledge and accept that this first year is rotten. I warn them not to change things much the first year, because you don’t realize that you are a ‘zombie’. You will see it later. You will also deeply regret the many changes you made when you took the ‘helpful advice’ of those around you.

In one case, what a loss there is after a 62 year marriage. The amount of time you were together isn’t the main thing though, it is the history and connection that was your life that you feel the most. You were part of a pair, a couple, two of you; now you are just you yourself. Somehow you have to deal with this.

One time a friend suffering through the ‘mourning’ of Divorce, compared it to that of Widowhood. But, no it’s a different thing. I realized that the difference was that: Divorced you hope you will never see the other person ever again; Widowed you would give anything/everything you have to spend  even a minute with them again.

No matter how much you would love to feel they are with you, they aren’t, and won’t be again in this life.

However long it has been, every memory is a tiny stab in your heart. It’s only the scar tissue getting thicker over time which lets it feel less like a direct hit than it was.

My last advice snippet is always the most important. Allow yourself to mourn. You have a right to do this. It is the time to do this. Do not stop yourself. You need to express what you feel. If others are there and you can/want to talk, this is the time. Your loss however, is so profound that it make take a while to say what you really feel, if you ever can or want to.

Mourn as long as you have to or want to. Never mind what someone else says or feels. They are having their own experience. It is not yours.

You will say your goodbye when you can and realize one day that you were singing one morning. You have come out on the other side. You are surprised but you’re still here and ready to move forward at last.