I glance at the clock above my husband’s hospital bed. It is 12:30 Sunday morning and the spirit of the one I loved best has just slipped into another world.
I gaze at the face that has filled my life for so many years … kiss his cool cheek and walk out of the room.
I am in a strange state … not really present. My feet move on their own and I head for the outer doors of the hospital, hand my car keys to my sister-in-law and without a word prepare for the trip back home.
I am now a widow.
The next few days go by in a blur of planning … cremation, funeral, and finally I sift through the legalities. Who would have thought the death of one individual would entail so much paperwork?
I carry on but my nights are full of weeping and there is little “joy in the morning.”
The family returns to their homes and responsibilities and I am in a time warp. Today does not exist. My mind meanders through memories … mostly of those last few days in hospital.
Then they start … as clear as a picture on the TV, visions of past years … his face as he smiled at me at the end of my hospital bed … ”We have a daughter sweetheart, we’ll call her Linda.” I see visions of him in his Air Force uniform, opening the apartment door, chasing his little girls down the hall … the giggles, the noise, the laughter.
I try to return to the real world but my memories haunt me. I pray, I talk incessantly, I weep copiously. There is no relief. Finally I pick up my pen and begin to write … pages fill, heartache eases and slowly light filters back into my darkness.
My writing reflected the grief I was so deeply experiencing. So my stories began … stories of anguish and despair but always of hope as I felt God’s presence even in my darkest hours.
In the next few weeks I will share with you some of the stories I wrote trying to make sense out of my new widowhood.
“Give sorrow words … the grief that does not speak, whispers oe’r fraught heart, and bids it break!” —Shakespeare
