Unwilling Refugee

Valentine's Day would have been fifteen years with Jeff.  We officially decided to become exclusive on Valentine's Day, 2004.  We were married seven years later and he was diagnosed with stage iv lung cancer on his birthday a year an a half after we were married.  He died fourteen months after diagnosis.  I recently read this quote:

“It’s when the drama is over and you face the grey mudflats of the future that the real widowhood begins... You don’t ‘get over’ the man, though you do after a year or two get over the death; but you have to learn to live in another country in which you’re an unwilling refugee.”

- Writer and agony aunt Katharine Whitehorn, who lost her husband in 2003 after 45 years of marriage.

I don't know if I am holding on too tight or not, but I don't think I have gotten over his death, even after five years.  I constantly wonder what our life would be like if he had not died five years ago.  I'm not naive to the fact that a lot can change in five years, people can change, and our relationship would probably have been different, I'm sure we would have experienced our struggles, but I do truly believe that we would have stayed together.  

I do know in my heart that he would not have handled all of the death in my family very well.  Sometimes I honestly believe that it was better for Jeff to have died before Mom got sick.  I think my mother's sickness and subsequent death would have affected him greatly and he would have struggled mightily with that.  

At times, I find it really hard for me to celebrate the milestones in my own life without reminding myself that Jeff is not here with me.  

I know this is my guilt monster.  I keep expecting my guilt monster to go away but maybe it never will.  Maybe my guilt monster will plague me forever and I just need to continue to battle and keep it at bay.

What I do know is that I miss my husband.  I miss my husband and I miss my mother.  I wonder if my mother hadn't gotten sick and died soon after Jeff died, I might be further along in my grief process.  They were both just so important to me that the loss of both of them continues to make me unbearably sad.