Someone younger reading this might say, "What's all the complaining about? You knew it was coming didn't you. After all you said in your marriage vows ....till death do us part. Now it has actually happened, why are you whining? And you did say, didn't you, in your introduction to the blog that she had a long final illness? So you must have had plenty of warning?"
Unfortunately grief just doesn't seem to work like that. There seems to be no way to prepare. Long tough illnesses, and the privilege of caregiving related to them, serve only to strengthen the relationship, and make it more intimate, making the disruption of it more painful.
The only way I can function at the moment is not by going around like someone who has had a major part of himself ripped way. I feel that Di's spirit is still with me. We are still a duo. I just can't see her. There is that old poem that says:
I am standing by the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch
until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud
just where the sun and the sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, "There she goes!
Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at that moment when someone at my side says,
"There she goes!",
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
"Here she comes!"
Parable of Immortality, Henry van Dyke, 1852 -1933
Thanks for sharing so much of yourself. I know how hard this is for you to go through, and how much you want the grief process to be over. As you've often said, "This too, shall pass." It will just take time. We're here for you.
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