Life after Mac's Death
It has been one month and a week after my husband, lover and best friend Mac died. Is there a life after his death?? well for me ...not really.
I have, what one would consider a really large and loving support system. First my family of five children, eleven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. There are the relatives, friends and neighbours, all willing to help, cheer, and even wine and dine me. Enough money to enjoy all the entertainment, restaurants and travel, if I am so inclined. I have hobbies and exercise routines giving me so-called fun activities.,
Apart from that I have some relatives and friends who have encouraged me to visit, or travel with them, which gives me something to think about and even to act upon. Therefore I am going to start in a nearby way, visiting friends for a couple of days at a time in Ottawa, Quebec, and Toronto. Later this will also include Florida, and California, these activities and visits by others, has given me a reason to sit down, plan and try to raise some excitement or perhaps to coin a better word I guess it would be to raise some interest of sorts.
All in all looking at the aforementioned paragraphs, life should go on, albeit without the main ONE in my life, MAC. I try to be clear to myself , sixty-three years of marriage to a man who was so there for me, of course it's to be understood, I'll feel this way, but even as I write this, I don't want to feel this way-
It's absolutely clear, , there is no HELP for it. We were commiserating a friend and myself about how lost we feel..her husband died a couple of months before mine she is in the same position and feels as she goes through the motion of living --this is NOT life. Another acquaintance once said to me that life without her husband was "pure torture". At the time I could hardly take that in - now I'm feeling - in a way - tortured.
All my life I have been writing, so many journals and a diary it and the journals are strewn around the apartment, I say to myself these will have to be burned before I too die. In the meantime I read them - cursing myself for writing so much about ME ...i.e. high school problems, and fun, first jobs, first loves, friends, getting married, my life as working wife, then a stay home mother, and then a back to school mom, a teacher , grandmother and great grandmother and finally - a blog about the main person- Mac. The blog records how we dealt with the last eight years of his life as a man suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. I now read the diaries and journals with only one aim. What did Mac do, what did HE say, I love to read lines like," I'm waiting here in bed - petting Tyrone (our cat at the time), as soon, Mac will be here to pet me."
How we enjoyed our life, our togetherness, our love and even our arguments, which believe me were many. I'm sure our kids could attest to both.
So what can help, in some ways, NOTHING..but a friend gave me a book titled " Healing After Loss, by Martha Whitmore Hickman, this book helped her in many ways. Before I close my eyes at night - I'm reading the daily meditations ...this particular one seems to resonate for me
"What do we have to give. If we venture a new love what is to protect us from the same thing happening again". Nothing... In my case it means loving others - well it did happen, I was so looking forward o seeing my friend Dorothy, she had gone through loss, her husband died a few years ago, we were such good friends. and planning to console and love each other..on the Wednesday after Mac died - but she died before then... the book goes on to say, "there is nothing to protect us" ,so true....It was such a blow, " "
"the wisdom of the ages is to pour love out on the rest of creation." So that's what I'm trying to do/ in small doses . for example, I am visiting one man who is now on the second floor with all the advanced Dementia patients, his wife is in hospital. He is suffering so much without her. but, both of us get some relief as I show him books about his country of origin, England. In fact we quite enjoy the short time, and he is so happy when he sees pictures of various areas in England including his own, i.e. Durham.
I had also made a practice when Mac was alive, to visit Alice. She is wheelchair bound, partially blind, toothless and miserable for the most part, but she does get some bit of enjoyment when I visit. Now she likes to think about where to put Mac's ashes, I tell her his ashes will be buried up at our country place - oh but where will yours go. I say In the lake, oh take some of Mac's he has to be in the lake with you. Then we discuss how he didn't swim that much and I did - and so we go on to different scenarios with the ashes- somehow when I am with Alice or Cliff, I feel somehow still connected to Mac, therefore not so so sad. This seems to work - giving them both some love helps me as well. This advice in the book works. So life does go on after a death of a loved one..it's not the life I want - that's impossible, but it's the life I have ..so I'll continue to offer a form of love to others who may need it. g'nite and love jan
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