Grief - my journey after loosing my wife

My wife is without doubt the most important person in my life. She was the one whom I related everything through and did everything for. She was my partner, my soul mate and my love. It seems almost incomprehensible that I was ever any other way.

Until after she died and life without her became apparent.

For those who have absolutely no notice of a death (you know, not people who suffered a terminal illness and die over weeks or months) the initial shock of the death is just horrible. Certainly the anguish of the first moments when are informed they are dead are horrible.

Then when you get to be by their side and can physically touch them all the emotions just pour out like out of a fire hose (well that's how it was for me). All I felt was great wracking tears like a baby. Nothing coherent except wanting to talk with her and touch her as if she was still alive, but knowing that she wasn't.

There was nothing written about this sort of thing which I could find, despite searching.  One of the things which came clearly to me when I was doing research in Environmental Science was that in the social sciences (which I needed to touch upon), were very often based on the many referencing the few. And so It is that I find the same thing with trying to understand my journey through grief.

I am sure that with the simplest google search you can find the 'stages of grief' as documented in the popular annals of psychology. I read it and found that I had only a passing identification with it. For starters I did not find myself in the bargaining stage after my wife had died.

So I wanted to write something about this for others who may come along looking for some sort of answers but be unhappy with / unable to relate to what is already written by others.

Firstly it would seem to me that this is a journey which you take alone. Certainly you get some support from your friends but you are essentially alone. To put a modern slant on this, its almost like being in a place where you have never been before and are in touch with your friends only by phone, email, or facebook.

Noone seems to be able to touch your heart. So while others who are not as close can go home to their families and homes, at the end of the day I (you) have to go home to be alone with just the certain knowledge that your partner is simply gone.

I now know what 'inconsolable' means.

Now each day is the grief of their absence combined with sadness of loneliness which may have troubled you before you met your loved one. All the things which you hated about life before them are back in your face and everything you loved about life with them is gone.

I am now a different person to who I was on the 18th of August. I suspect I will never be able to recover but only that I will be able to heal. Strangely its not unlike the experience of having my heart surgery. I am still alive but there are scars which hurt and constant reminders of the changed situation.

As time goes on I will put more about this on my blog and it can be found with the label "grief" in the tag navigation. Right now I'm exhausted. I've just got off the phone from the doctor discussing the results of the histology examination and I feel totally drained and unable to think clearly.