Grief 101

Lately I have been trying really hard not to let this grief get the best of me...as in taking over my life.  My kids are grown, my grandkids are 3000 miles away. I had to move after my Dave died so most of my friends are an hour or more drive from me.  When I lost my home and farm, I lost my income (I lost all of that at the whim of my MIL, which was another layer of pain and grief) so I am essentially broke. I moved to a town where there are no jobs to be had. I am here because I had nowhere else to go. 

I am 58 years old and the prospects of me ever having another relationship are almost nil as I see it. Not that I ever want another relationship. The one I had was perfect and that would be a tough act to follow.  I don't think I could be with someone else without comparing him to Dave and that would be so unfair. But I am a realist and I know that I probably have another 30-35 years to go in this life and being alone for all that time is very scary to me. The weight of all that started really getting me down.

With nothing much to fill my days, I have all this empty time on my hands. I have had plenty of time to focus on what is wrong with my life and that is what I was doing up until about a month ago. I can't really explain it but I kind of had a "vision" that changed my mind about things and so I have been working very hard on remembering only how incredible my life with Dave has been and not on "poor me".

I am starting to feel just a tiny bit better by the day and even though I have those meltdowns (still can't listen to the radio other than NPR or go to certain places), as soon as I start to feel one coming on, I think about something wonderful we did and in a few minutes I start to feel better. Shedding those tears has come to represent a shedding of negative emotions for me and replacing them with good ones.  Some days that works and some days it doesn't but the positive days are starting to outnumber the other ones. I think that is a good thing.