Cocooning for a Heavy Heart

Preface Warning:  This blog entry may be difficult for some to read.  It’s okay, I understand.  It isn’t the easiest to write.  If you have stress and anxiety triggered by talk of suicide, stop here. 

Grief… today, it is heavy.  Today, it is pulling me down, down into an abyss, in which the only refuge is to cocoon in my bed.  I woke up feeling a profound sense of sadness during the night.  I still feel it now.  The renewed realization that I have lost the love of my life sits heavy on my chest this morning.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not like I am not living with this every day.  Someone recently commented that they didn’t want to trigger me, and I explained that I really haven’t found triggers because each day, I wake up to the same reality – my husband is gone, taken from us by a mind that he could not quiet.  Today, though, it is different.  Today, it sits heavy.  Today, it sits as heavy as the dank, gray day just outside my window. 

Today, I am reminded that when I lost Grubby, I lost my world.  It’s like working a puzzle, getting to the end of the pieces, and realizing that some of the pieces are missing.  I am transported back to early on, when I remarked to a dear friend that I wasn’t one hundred percent.  He told me that I was still a hundred percent, but that I was all jumbled up and that, with time, I would be put back together – maybe cracked and dented, but back together once again.

Today, I am reminded that when I lost Grubby, I lost the group of ladies to whom I had been so close with, my tribe.  I dreamt of one of them last night, and I could see that she was gone in the dream.  She was physically present, but she had left the friendship months ago.  That made the realization of what I’ve lost that much more difficult. 

Johnny Mandel once sang, “Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes…”  Suicide is only painless for the person who does it.  It leaves a whole new level of pain for those left behind.  I choose not to take that path, so I endure the pain, but I understand why some do.

Everything changes when your spouse dies…  Every little thing.  There is no way to avoid the change.  You can run, but eventually, reality will catch up with you and you have to stop running.  It is then that you feel the feels.  Today, those feels are painful and raw, just like they were forty-nine weeks ago. 

Today, those feels are too much for me to face.  I am cocooning in the safety of my bed for a while, and that’s okay.  I am cocooning so I can feel safe; safe to be sad at the profound loss that I have suffered, safe from the chill of the emptiness that surrounds me today, safe from the dank, gray day just outside my door… I am cocooning with the hope that once I emerge, the heaviness will have lifted and I will be able to breathe normally again.