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Archive for the ‘Widow’ Category

When We Mourn

Posted in Grief, Healing, Loss, mourning, surrender, Transformation, Widow, tagged , , , , , , on February 19, 2016| 1 Comment »

Another article I wrote in the fall of 2014 – that I didn’t post.

In the Op-Ed section of a recent Sunday New York Times, there was an article I tore it out so I could read it again. You never know when something sparks an emotion, a thought, a piece of the puzzle I didn’t know was missing. Here’s the quote that had me pondering:

“When we mourn, isn’t it not just for our relationship with a person, but also for the physical presence of her, of her aliveness? The voice, smell, textures and warmth, the gestures we know intimately, all of these are replaced with their opposites in death. We are left with a hole that the energy that powered the person through life once filled.”

That last sentence nails it. “We are left with a hole that the energy that powered the person through life once filled.” That’s why I felt empty, at a loss – a loss of presence, of energy, of aliveness when Mike suddenly departed. Yes, with all the mannerisms, habits and behaviors that I loved or drove me crazy but with him gone, I missed them all.

As I have said before, when Mike passed on to the “next expression of life”, I knew he was and is fine. I was the one left to adjust to the change. To learn how to live with that hole that suddenly appeared. Actually, to first feel the feelings of loss, of sadness, of whatever I am feeling. Feeling my feelings was not a practice I learned growing up or during most of my life. I was more focused on action, doing and thinking. In the last ten to fifteen years, I have learned more about feeling my feelings – even being aware of what my feelings are rather than what I think.

In every experience, I know there is a gift. Some call it the silver lining. Mike’s death gave me the gift of learning to really accept my feelings, to dive down deep into them, and to be present with my feelings – to allow them. Our society doesn’t always encourage us to stop and feel our feelings. We have to move on. What’s next? Keep on keeping on, rather than stopping – to pause and ask, what am I feeling now? Sometimes, especially in the first 2 to 3 years after his death, feelings of grief would come like a wave that crashed over me and I would be overcome with the grief and sadness. Only after developing a practice of diving into the waves of my feelings, could I discover how to collect the energy, the aliveness, the love that was Mike and bring it into my heart to fill the hole. What I have learned is that this process happens over time. It’s not a quick fix. Years, it takes years – and that’s ok.

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Discarding Widows Weeds

Posted in Grief, Healing, Loss, surrender, Transformation, Widow, tagged , , , , , , on February 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

IMG_1501 I’ve found some things I wrote but never posted. Here’s one.

September 21, 2014  I was in a meditation circle today and the last thing that came to me were the words, “discarding widow’s weeds”. The message was so clear I had to pay attention to it. I wondered, what ARE widow’s weeds? When I got home, I googled widows weeds and found a book titled, Widows Weeds and Weeping Veils, and ordered it.

I discovered that weeds (waed) is Old English for garment. In Victorian times, a widow would wear mourning dress for 2 to 4 years. Queen Victoria led the example for what would be the Victorian style of mourning the dead when her husband, Albert, died in 1861. She wore black for the rest of her life. When she died in 1901 the style of mourning slowly changed. Another reason they were called widows weeds is that the lightweight black crepe fabric most often used to make the garments would start to fade after a lot of wear and look rather worn. Of course, there were many elaborate garments made in the style of the day in all black that were quite beautiful with lots of detail.

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art had an exhibit that opened in October 2014 called, Death Becomes Her, A Century of Mourning Attire, exhibiting clothes and accessories from 1815 to 1915. Something’s up with all this – at least for me!

There was etiquette and prescribed manners to mourning during that time. First of all, death was a common occurrence in the culture and was discussed openly. Death occurred most often in the home, not in a hospital. It was present in daily life. We have gotten so far away from this in today’s world. There were signs that let everyone know a death had occurred – from putting black crepe on the front door, to the family dressed in black. There were specific rules to follow and even funeral foods served at home following the burial. Since the time for mourning was observed for years, the stages of mourning were expressed in the style and color of dress – from black to shades of grey and sometimes mauve. The recommended time for mourning differed for men, women and children and whether it was a spouse, child or relative that had died. Women had the primary responsibility for expressing the grief of the family through what they wore. Widows, especially, had to mourn longer and limit their social activities.

When I found out my husband had died, I thought . . . widow, I’ve never done that before. Even the word sounds strange. In our society today, there are mostly not customs in place to acknowledge that grieving takes time. The Jewish faith has 7 days, 30 days and 1 year rituals that I think are good and so helpful with the process of grieving. It’s not something one gets over and moves on in a speedy manner.

I discovered that when the third anniversary of my husband’s death came around, I was ready to move away from so much remembrance and let go of the grief that would arise every so often. Another woman friend I talked to told me the same thing, that at year three after her husband’s death she was ready to move on.  A friend told me it took her mother 5 years before she could make major changes to the house after her husband died. For myself, that didn’t happen, as my sister died a few weeks after the third anniversary of my husband’s death – which put me in a place of mourning and change all over again.

Who knew this process took so long. Now more than 5 years along, I am ready to move on and am open to a new relationship.  At the same time, I find myself diving deeper into the past and learning more about the culture of mourning we had a hundred years ago. Moving forward and going back. There is something for me to bring forward. It has yet to be revealed. Stay tuned.

 

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Is it Grief or Loss . . . or Both?

Posted in Grief, Healing, Loss, surrender, Widow on January 10, 2016| 1 Comment »

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In the recent article in the New York Times, The Smell of Loss, the author Julie Myerson describes her experiences smelling her mother-in-law’s perfume a year or more after she had died. Her exploration of why the scent persists at times includes asking scientists and others for their explanation of this phenomenon. It’s a hallucination, a ghost, or the brain’s way of bringing up a memory – a sensory memory, they say.

I had a similar experience of scent a month or so after my husband died. I came upstairs to our bedroom and there was the very strong smell of coffee. He drank coffee every morning.   There was no coffee made or being made in the kitchen downstairs. The smell was unmistakably coffee. I did not go searching for where that scent was coming from. I figured he had shown up to say hello. I had not gone searching for why this occurred. After reading this NY Times article, I googled “smelling perfume of deceased”. The first site I found listed the Top Ten Signs from your Loved Ones in Spirit. Turns out I’d had several of these common experiences. Another site from the authors of Hello From Heaven calls them ADC’s – After Death Communications. They have done similar research. Their book of the same name was so helpful to me after my husband died explaining that these things do happen and are quite common. I wasn’t going crazy.

In my Internet search, I learned that the ability to smell the fragrance from a deceased loved one is called clairgustance. Hearing a voice is called clairaudience. Getting a phone call is also common. I did get that one. I wished I’d saved it. There was a message on my cell phone that just said, “I love you” – very softly. I knew it was from my husband. I received the message the day after he died. Another common experience is receiving a physical sign. I had a friend tell me there were a lot of butterflies after their father’s funeral. I think my husband showed up as a raccoon in my back yard after his memorial. I didn’t say that, my best friend did. The raccoon just stared and stared at us. A friend’s mother had an owl that visited her every day for a week after her husband died.

Another sign is movement such as a photo or picture falling off the wall, or an object is moved. I had that one, too. I gave my husband a small metal heart after we were married and he always carried it in his pocket with his change. I had put in on the altar I created on our bedroom dresser. One day I discovered it had been moved and it wasn’t by me or anyone else. Strange electrical occurrences such as lights or appliances going on or off, or clocks stopping are other signs. Another is that we might hear buzzing noises in our ears. I read that they are communicating from a higher frequency, which may be experienced as ringing or buzzing in our ears. I hadn’t thought about that one being applicable and I don’t think it is for me. I had some buzzing in my ears that got more pronounced after the Elton John concert I attended this summer.

Overall, from what I have read and experienced myself, I do believe these experiences are real and they are not a hallucination. So many people have had these experiences. And, sometimes the inexplicable is just that. I’m ok with that. Are you?

The crux is that grief is a process that takes time and we get signs to help us along – from life as well as sometimes from the deceased. The change from having that person we love at hand and then gone is the hardest part to adjust to. As the author Julie Myerson quotes in her article, “Loss. Isn’t that the hardest lesson of human existence? The finality of losing someone you love, of having them fall right out of your life forever: the cold and terrible permanence of it.”

And yet, what I have discovered that lives on is the love. The love never dies or is lost. We hold it in our heart always. When we experience a loss, our heart is cracked open. Which always reminds me of the Leonard Cohen quote: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

 

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