https://hopeforwidows.org/2019/03/consumed-by-love/

Consumed by Love – Latest Blog on the Hope for Widows Site

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had a serious illness or major operation, or any other traumatic physical malady. I’ve never suffered any physical affliction that required months to heal or physical therapy to get back on my feet, nothing that required patience and hard work to regain my strength or mobility in order to return to normal. So being consumed by grief and having to work through it for more than a year is something foreign to me. Working with a therapist to help me slowly make my way back to normal is something I’m unaccustomed to. I’m not a patient person, and I’ve rarely had to be; as a result, I’ve been impatient with the whole grief process. I found myself wondering month after month, how long will it be until I feel normal again? How long will it be until I get used to living here alone? How long will it be until he doesn’t consume most of my waking thoughts, until the memories of absolutely everything we’ve done together start to dissipate?

Then, today, when I woke up, I realized I did not look over at the empty spot in my bed and start to feel the sadness overcome me. My first thoughts this morning weren’t of Rick. When I went to bed last night, I didn’t cry myself to sleep because I longed to hear him softly snoring next to me again. I didn’t hug my pillow pretending it’s him. And that indicates that I’m far, far ahead of where I was last year – or even a few months ago – on this long grief journey. The memories still come and I imagine they will for the rest of my life. Some bring sadness, some make me smile. But the gut wrenching pain they bring is mostly in the past. This morning was very different from the mornings of the past year and a half. This morning I woke up realizing that I’m mostly done being consumed by grief.

Read the blog on the Hope for Widows website.

About the author

Katherine Billings Palmer is a technical writer, poet, and essayist from Garden City, Michigan. She’s won several academic writing awards, including first place in the University of Michigan Dearborn Critical Essay Contest for her work about poet John Donne: “‘The Sun Rising’: A Lover’s Boast.”

In 2017, Katherine’s husband, Rick, died of complications from small cell lung cancer. She wrote a series of poems and essays about her struggles to cope with her grief. I Wanted to Grow Old With You is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

Her latest book, A Widow’s Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry – The First Year was published in January 2019 and is also available on Amazon.com.

Katherine is a guest blogger for the Hope for Widows Foundation and writes about her grief journey at www.TheWritingWidow.com.

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