There’s no expiration date on grief.

I had this thought last night when I saw this in my Twitter stream ….

Dead wife card ? Yea, that’s a hand everyone wants to play, a dead spouse. I hope the sarcasm is seeping through your screens at the moment.

I also got a message that I was being a little touchy about death.

Well no shit. Lose your husband and your father in a 9 month time frame and come tell me how you feel, mmmkay ?

I thought my head was going to explode.

In case you don’t know, Danny Gokey finished third on American Idol last season. He tried out for the show weeks after he lost his wife to a heart condition. There’s a great article about him here. One of the songs on his new album describes what I and I imagine others who have lost the loves of their lives feel, and it’s called I Will Not Say Goodbye . I can’t listen to it without crying, and I can hardly muster the strength that he must have had to summon to be able to sing it. So for someone to say something about that upset me. I understand they have the right to say what they want, but it still struck me. And the best, not to mention healthiest way for me to get my feelings out about it is to blog and vent through my keyboard. I hear women’s prisons are a scary place anyway.

Everyone experiences loss. You will eventually lose a relative, a friend, an acquaintance. But the death of a spouse, like the death of a child, is different. Unless you have experienced it, you don’t know. In the weeks since my father passed, my mother has said to me countless times that she never understood what I was going through, but now she does. She is walking the same road that I am. The same road that widows and widowers everywhere walk. Our paths might be different, our journeys varied, but we know. And if you haven’t been where we are, you do not.  This does not negate your right to say and feel how you want, nor does it negate ours to shout at the top of our lungs for you to STFU and let us grieve, damnit. If it makes you uncomfortable, just go away. We need people that can be uncomfortable and still be there for us. Unconditionally.

We will never “get over it.” We will move forward, continue living, and if lucky enough and open to receive it, find love again. But the person that left us will always live within us, until we leave this earth. We will hold close to their memories, their picture, the love that they once wrapped us in like a safety net. And we, for the most part, will do it on our own. Everyone has their own way of dealing with their grief monster. And it is that person’s choice alone. I have made bad decisions. I have thrown myself into a funk, I have hidden under my covers, hoping it will go away. I have locked myself into my home, only leaving for work and supplies. My connections to the outside world consist of what comes in and out of my Mac, my iPhone and my television. I have eaten way too much, and drank even more than I should have. I have questioned divine beings and cursed the ones that I have been taught exist. I have said “Why wasn’t it me?” And on the days when I have been with friends, done normal things and actually lived my life, I am later chased down and consumed by a fog of guilt so thick I wonder if I might drown in it. As I come to the one year “death-a-versary” of Gregory’s death, I am proud of myself for the progress I am making but still feel the guilt washing in, threatening to overtake it. I find the facade of “I’m OK” getting shaky and leaving me weak-kneed and wary of the next breakdown. And then I somehow muster the strength that comes out of nowhere to take one more step, smile one more smile, to get out of bed and face another day. I have to. For me.

I. Me. That’s all there is.

Us. We. They are gone. He and I are no longer, and will never be again, except in memories and photographs.

I am a widow.

I have come to the realization that I am not alone. There are others like me. Women and men alike. We share the common bond of death, and in that terrible connection comes a sense of understanding and kinship that those who have not been through it cannot fathom. We also see the ones that have made it through the fog, who have found a new love, starting a new life with someone. When I see these people, I know they once knew what we are going through, but now, to me, they are outsiders. They are not us anymore, they are a “we.” They have someone to come home to, to call, celebrate holidays with, to wake up with on a lazy Sunday morning. They are no longer a widowed person. They have found their new identity. And I am glad for them, but they are no longer one of “us.” Lucky them.

My love for Gregory has no expiration date. I will walk this well traveled road of grief as long as I need to, and I will do it in my own time. I will lean on the arms, virtual and otherwise, that help hold me up when I am at my weakest. I will smile and laugh and live, because I know that is what life is about.

To quote Jimmy Buffett again , I will “breathe in, breathe out, move on.”

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