Every time I think there is some hope for a break in the grief, I run into a wall. Today is the four-month anniversary of my husband's death. And the grief feels as overwhelming as the first moment. I want to just walk around screaming his name. And Where are you? And How could you have left me? And How do I live without you? And I miss you so much.
My cats and horses help me. I joined a Bereavement Group and find talking with other women, OK other widows, helps. But it is the between times that get me. When I stop doing and lift up my head.
Oh, I can keep busy -- I can visit friends, go to events, clean the house, do the laundry, go see the horses, work on the taxes, take some photos, ship out some items, work on my websites, write someone's copy, pay the monthly bills -- all not working for me right now. I don't even want to call anyone. Don't feel like talking. So I find myself here. Writing. Thinking. Feeling. Grieving. Grieving. Grieving.
I've been reading about staying with my feelings, going into my pain. Accepting. Acknowledging. Being in the moment. Problem is, I feel like I am drowning. That the abyss will swallow me. And I suppose it is a testament to my life force that I don't want to be swallowed. That there is still fight left in me. I just don't know how to survive without Rob.
I found this poem, again. Rob believed that he had experienced a life/death choice during his surgery and wrote this poem from it. I always read it thinking of cancer and illness and death. Now I feel he wrote it as a lifeline to me.
Ever/Bardo
By Robert Greenebaum
Have you ever dropped out of time
Have you ever been where
There are no directions
Where there is no bottom
But you are not falling
Where there is no volition
No will
No lies
Where the idea of hope
Is not yet emergent
Where even blankness
Has withered away
Maybe you have been there--or maybe not
It is not a place one chooses to go
It just happens
Maybe in an instant
If this has ever happened to you
Perhaps you might be interested in this:
Try it on for size; see if it fits; learn it
Word by word
Each word is a vessel into which you
Can pour your own meaning
Yet it is a vessel
A vessel hewn from within the bardo
If you use it, be patient, be diligent,
Be stubborn, and never give up
For a billion, billion lifetimes:
I
May there now arise in this very moment
Pervasive ease of well-being
II
Throughout the entire mind
And body with no breaks,
Holes, or lapses.
III
May the entire mind and body
Be wiped completely clean
Of any and all ill-ness
And all dis-ease
IV
May there now arise in this very moment
Pervasive ease of well-being
If you take up the mantra
Never lay it down
I pass it on to you from within the bardo
May you receive its beneficial effects