I’ve read many times now that losing someone like this is not something you recover from or God forbid, “Get over.” How could you? This is not a trial in life that you pass through and look back on. A loss is quite different from a trial. It’s not just something you can learn from and then move on. What you have lost is not replaceable in some way. There is no formula to understand it, “Oh maybe this happened so that this could happen.” No, no, no, that is way too simple. I think that’s what always bothered me about Job- how he loses everything he has and fairly questions God, but in the end- wait, he gets a whole new family- so everything’s OK. Um…no.
The most popular analogy I’ve come across on the slew of widow websites out there- and yes, there are a ton- is that losing your spouse is not just like suffering a wound that will heal over and then you’ll have a scar. No, it’s suffering an amputation. And if you lost your leg, no one would ask you in a year if your leg was better. Yes, you will go on eventually somehow- but not because you’re “better” or “healed” but because you adapt and learn to limp or use a cane or prosthetic. So you’re walking again, but it’s obviously not the same. I do like this analogy.
I was telling our old pastor on the phone last week that I really couldn’t imagine my life ever “going on,” and that this is never going to go away. He said that no, I wouldn’t be “healed,” but that my scar might take on a new meaning just as the scars that the resurrected body of Jesus still had, took on a completely new meaning after he rose from the dead.
I honestly can not imagine yet how that will be so for me and my pain on this side of the grave, but I will try to keep an open mind. The only certainty I have really in this life, is that I know so very little about anything. I still wish to believe in a perspective, in a reality greater than my own.
The image that I liked (I was widowed suddenly at 29) was of Michaelangelo's David. The block of marble from which it was carved was intended for something else, and had been badly gouged. So badly it was thought to be unusuable. Michaelangelo carved the David at an odd angle and in a shape to accommodate the wound, making it part of the final creation. It's not a fix, but a reshaping.
I'm now in my 50s and remarried. But I still grieve my first husband.