Learning To Say Goodbye

Once again, this past week was horrible. It started on Friday, May 23rd when I hit what felt like a big speed bump in this grieving process. All I know is that everything just seemed to spin out of control, me included. Major meltdown would be putting it mildly. I also began feeling really bad, running a fever constantly, day after day for no apparent reason. It wasn’t accompanied with any other symptom except by Sunday night I noticed these red spots beginning to appear everywhere. They didn’t itch or hurt or anything, they were just there. Then in a couple of days those yucky red spots began to itch like crazy, very much like an intense case of hives. I had no idea what was going on but I almost got to the point where I felt maybe I should see a doctor. After all of these events I realized it had actually been days since I even broke down and cried, I was too sick to even think about anything else.

When things began to get better, very slowly and gradually, I started wondering what this could have been that seemed to have come out of nowhere… But then I realized it didn’t come out of nowhere… I had actually let myself go, physically, emotionally, and mentally, so much so that my resistance must have registered below zero and my nerves were totally shot. It was then that I remembered all the times in the past 5 months that I had just wished God would take me too so I wouldn’t have to continue with this misery of having to live without my husband any longer. But once faced with feeling like I was really dying, or at least it felt that way, all of a sudden I think I was having second thoughts, mainly because I really didn’t want it to be a slow and suffering sort of death, just something quick would have been fine. But after alot of thought I began to realize that maybe God knew I needed a break from this grief, a temporary reprieve, of sorts, to stop this runaway train from its course of self-destruction. I really did feel like I was going to explode and had no idea how to deal with any of it any longer.

So, while I was recuperating, my latest issue of ‘AfterLoss’ arrived and what do you think I find in there? An article about the Anatomy of Grief (Phase Two: Realization) The first part of the article reads like this —

Prolonged Stress

Grieving requires tremendous energy. Whenever large quantities of energy are used, an inordinate amount of stress is created. It is the nature of this stress response that creates the greatest difficulty during this ‘realization’ phase.

Studies validate the fact that prolonged stress can cause a weakening of parts of the immune system which is responsible for warding off infectious disease. Widowed people see their doctors twice as often in the first months following a death than they did before. Prescriptions are written at a rate of seven times higher than for women similar in age and clinical profile.

Emotional outbursts so common during this period seem to create the largest drain on the energy supply. It takes a great deal of energy to to cry, to feel angry, guilty, abandoned and fearful. But it takes even greater energy to repress these feelings, during this turbulent period. Painful as it is, and yes, embarrassing at times, it is healthier to let those emotions out to ventilate them. Bit by bit, the release of pent-up energy and emotional pain relieves the burden of stress. Some may insist on throwing themselves into a frenzy of activity. Keeping busy is healthy as long as it is not overdone.

The article ends with —

Feelings at this time are intense and relentless. In many cases they cause physical and emotional exhaustion.

So, I’m supposing that’s what happened here and after a week of this I don’t want to go there again so I think it’s probably time to try a little harder to deal with all this in a healthier way. I think it’s time to try to find a grief support group. I’m apprehensive about looking into this but as someone very close to me pointed out this weekend - “You are trying to do this on your own without any outside help and it AIN’T working!” I guess they are right.