This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Life Enhancing Tips and How To's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
As I look back on my period of grief, I remember being incredibly upset with myself that after four months I wasn’t better. My grief continues even today, but in a much different form. Now it is an honoring of what was and a celebration of what is.
Yesterday I spent time with a new friend, a friend I became aquainted with because of our widow’s status. We sat, had tea, reviewed our lives since widowhood and looked at one another with love and curiosity.
Both of us are in solid relationships now, yet both of us marvel at the questions which seem to haunt us. Does the past ever go away, do old friends return, or are we destined to create and entirely new support community? Either way, can’t someone tell us the rules? The rules which will enable the old friends to celebrate our new lives, or are we destined in the minds of our old friends to be “widowed forever” ?
As old friends do, we laughed at our inquiries, commenting that when we were newly widowed we wanted a “book on how to do it.” When do I take off the wedding ring? When do I date? When do my old friends call? That book is sorely needed and missed.
And now, as she and I have moved forward, our questions continue…when can we celebrate moving forward while honoring the past? When, if ever, will the friends who knew us before, celebrate our new lives ?
Shoot, there are no books for motherhood, widowhood, divorcehood (is that a word?)
We all do our best, stumbling in the dark…reaching out to those we trust…leaving some behind but discovering “new friends” anew.
Blessings to the old and new friends who care over tea.
To celebration,
Beth
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