Coping and Guilt

Sometimes I read other widow's blogs and am surprised at where I am in my grieving process and where they were or currently are in their grieving process.  I know it's early for me still but I feel like I am moving through my grieving stages/process quickly.  Maybe too quickly.  Sometimes I read about a widow who cannot get out of bed and continues to be a terrible mess and her husband died months or even years before mine.  I know each person grieves differently but I still feel guilt that I have my good moments and bad moments but I seem to bounce back relatively well and quickly.  I don't seem to have weeks of deep sadness. 

I think this might have to do with the fact that I started grieving when Jeff was diagnosed and not just when he died.  The day of diagnosis (his 37th birthday) I grieved like he was going to die the next day.  The diagnosis was so horrific and hit me like a ton of bricks that I immediately started having panic attacks.  I couldn't be alone.  I couldn't breathe or eat.  I wanted to cling to him and even while physically clinging to him I still wasn't calmed.  This lasted weeks until we started treatment.

Throughout his treatment I feel like I was in hopeful denial that he was going to beat all the statistics and live for a long time, but deep down I knew that our time was severely limited.  I couldn't believe he even had cancer because he was not symptomatic.  He said it in the beginning too.  He said he didn't feel sick.  The only thing making him sick was the chemo.

Deep down I knew that he would leave me before either one of us was ready.  I started thinking about how I would cope once he was gone and started preparing my family and friends to help me.  I always talked about it in the distant future that I would need their support but I think talking about what I would need after he was gone has truly helped me.  I talked about going into therapy.  I talked about needing to not be alone and who would/could move in with me once Jeff was gone.  I ordered grief literature on Amazon.  I looked into attending bereavement groups.  I feel guilty.

I felt so guilty planning and thinking about what I was going to do once Jeff died because he wasn't dead yet.  But I thought about how I would react and feel sleeping alone, I thought about what I would do with his clothes, what was going to happen to his truck and other belongings.  The guilt of "planning" how my life would be once he was gone was terrible but I try to think that it was a defense mechanism, that it was a coping mechanism, that it seems to fit my personality of a planner and analyzer and a control freak.  I think this aspect of my personality is one of the reasons I seem to be holding it together relatively well right now.  

But who really knows.  I feel terribly guilty admitting these actions and thoughts.  I haven't even been able to admit it to my therapist yet.  I did admit it to a very close friend right after Jeff was diagnosed.  When I told her it was terminal she told me that I would survive and be able to overcome once he died.  I cried so hard because I knew in my heart that I would survive, that I would one day be able to feel joy again, and the guilt was terrible.  I NEVER wanted my husband to die, but I knew that I would survive and I knew that I was the determining factor of how my survival would be.  I made decisions based off of trying to survive in a way that was still truly living and not just going through the motions of life.  I didn't want to just breathe, eat, sleep.  I wanted to feel.  As I'm going through these months without Jeff, I'm definitely feeling and it's mainly painful, but I'm hoping for less pain in the coming months.  And that makes me feel guilty.