Now that I've lived over 3 years without Jeff and my mom is on hospice, I keep telling myself that if I could survive Jeff's death, I can survive anything, even my own mother's death.
"The Polished Widow" said something similar in her post:
Once you bury your husband, you realize you can do anything.
Now this might be a little too much bravado since I don't exactly know how I'm going to react to my mother's death, but, like "The Polished Widow," I've taken on a "let life happen" and "it is what it is" approach to life. We don’t always have control over situations We sometimes can't even control our own feelings, we just need to ride them out and realize that "this too shall pass."
"The Polished Widow" says, burying my husband showed me that, and gave me a new perspective on life. I felt like once Nick died, once that unimaginable event happened, and I can honestly say now, that I am proud of the way I handled it, that it did make me feel almost invincible. If that’s what life had for me, then everything else would be a piece of cake. I had got through the worst possible life situation at my age, and I survived...Since burying Nick, I don’t stress about the future, I only wonder where we’ll be in the next year, not the next ten. If something is out of my control, then I definitely don’t stress about it. What is the use in worrying about something, that hasn’t even happened yet. If I spent the time when Nick was sick, worrying about when his end would come, then I would not have enjoyed our last months together...This belief of living in the moment has stuck with me ever since. I
don’t like to plan things too far into the future, preferring to live in
the present instead...I have minimal time in my life for controversy, stupidity or trivial
matters. One of my friends reminded me of my bluntness following Nick’s
death, when she came over to vent about a boy she was seeing, lots of
blah, blah, blah, I don’t know if I want to be with him stuff. I told her to get over herself, if she didn’t want to be with him, to
break it off. Her happiness was more important than spending her time
crying about it on my couch...It’s like I inherited a part of Nick’s confidence when he passed. Losing Nick, who was my rock, made me need to be more assertive myself. There was no longer anyone else to fall back on, and though I have
happily remarried, I’m still fiercely independent. I will never go back
to relying on anyone else to be my backbone...I will also add, I like the new me, I prefer the woman I’ve become to
the one I was. It’s why I’m so grateful for having had Nick in my life...Don’t sweat the small stuff, enjoy time with your kids and family,
know how fleeting life can be, surround yourself with positive people...Because life doesn’t have to be hard, it’s what you make it, you can get through anything if you don’t have a ‘woe is me‘ mentality.
This is why I love reading other widow blogs. They remind me I'm not alone, I can empathize and relate, and they usually put what I'm feeling into words so much better than I can!
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