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Permalink Reply by The Dread Pirate on December 20, 2010 at 2:59am

Thanks for sharing, Sheila.  I can relate to your pain.  This is the first Christmas that my young daughters and I will spend without their mother, my beloved wife who passed at the beginning of February this year.  What we later realised were symptoms were troubling her at Christmas last year, but we spent a happy time together.  And its the happiness that I'm trying to hold onto, as I ride the inevitable emotional rollercoaster.  I'm trying to do everything I can think of to make this a happy and magical time for my girls while trying to ignore the presumably psychosomatic physical symptoms I'm experiencing.

Grief is strange and, I think, in many ways antisocial.  Forums like this are helpful to me because, although there are many people who know me and knew my wife, who were touched by her passing and who wish us well, the reality is that we all have our own lives to lead and, as adults, have to take responsibility for our own lives.  Those lucky enough to have close friends of long standing living close by who are prepared to be the regular shoulder to cry on (etc) should make full use of that.  That's not something that's currently available to me, which is why this forum, and others like it, are helpful to me.

My wife and I had only 10 years together and yet that time, during which our amazing, beautiful daughters came into the world, was in a way, a whole life: births, marriage and death.  A time filled with sunlight and laughter, challenge and adventure.  And its that which I'll be trying to keep in mind this holiday season.