Dear sister - an open letter to a sister who needs to read this. . .
Wish I could, I could've said goodbye
I would've said what I wanted to
Maybe even cried for you
If I knew it would be the last time
I would've broke my heart in two
Tryin' to save a part of you
You shared this song with me because you know that we have a shared journey. We are part of a club that nobody wishes to join, no married woman in her right mind anyway. Yes, it's the widows club. I met your lovely mother at an event the other week and you wanted me to know if I had told her that I was a friend of yours. It was funny because I did tell her that I was a friend of yours. She wanted to know how we were connected so I told her. That we had lost our husbands in the same year. In a matter of a month I believe. I know you never got a chance to say goodbye to your husband when he passed away. I was very fortunate that I did get a chance to say goodbye to mine, and it was a brief and public one, but it was still a goodbye nonetheless. Time reminds you things that you should be grateful for - no matter how small.
Don't wanna feel another touch
Don't wanna start another fire
Don't wanna know another kiss
No other name falling from my lips
Don't wanna give my heart away
To another stranger
Don't let another day begin
Won't even let the sunlight in
No I'll never love again
I'll never love again
When you first become a widow, people around will try their hardest to say things to try and comfort you or that you want to hear. "He's in a better place", "so sorry for your loss", "we'll be here if you need anything". People always mean well but they might not necessarily know the right things to say. And they wouldn't know. They might never understand that you aren't ready to get remarried (something I was faced within a week of Loma passing, a suggestion that still rankles with the thought of it). You learn to guard your heart and lock it away. You do this because you know that your heart will never love the same way again. And it won't. We don't want to give it away to anyone again, least of all a stranger, Because our hearts are broken and they stopped beating the moment we lost our husbands. Only other widows who loved their husbands will understand that kind of pain. Sunlight ceases to exist and everything loses their lustre and shine. You lose all sense of feeling and everyone around you wants you to hurry through your grief. But they need to remember, it's not their grief to process, it's yours.
When we first met
I never thought that I would fall
I never thought that I would find myself
Lying in your arms
And I want to pretend that it's not true
Oh baby that you're gone
Cos my world keeps turning and turning and turning
And I'm not moving on
You have wonderful and cherished memories of your husband. You made spectacular and beautiful children together who remind you of him everyday. You have family events and occasions that you have vivid memories of him, being himself, enjoying the company of everyone around him. You even have moments of his mannerisms, the looks he would give you and the things he said that you had recorded in your head, your own secret language that nobody else could decipher. The disbelief of the loss, of the realisation that he isn't coming back, is never going to return - that was a hard thing to process within that first moment. You distinctly remember where you were, who you were with and what you were doing on that day. You remember that and yet you don't want to remember it. People will want you to relay that story over and over again. I have had people ask me to regale that story often - when did I find out, what happened, how did he slip away, how did I survive it all - moments that people wanted me to share in a public eulogy - and never delivered.
I don't wanna know this feeling
Unless it's you and me
I don't wanna waste a moment
And I don't wanna give somebody else the better part of me
I would rather wait for you
You notice time more these days. You never really paid attention to it before. Just always used to think you had plenty of it - or never enough of it. Totally depended on what you were doing at the time and whose pressures and commitments beckoned your attention the most. Priorities were built around your events together, or going off on your own individual events, but then you would regroup and talk about how your day was at the end of it. You would talk about people and events that you went to on your own and laugh about how things went, or commiserate possibly about how badly they went. He would either make you laugh to distract you from feeling bad about it or snap you out of it with that special way that only he knew how to do. Because he got you. He understood you better than yourself, especially when you had to be upset or mad about something, until he made you realise otherwise, the better way to be, the better way to be yourself. The best of you.
Don't wanna feel another touch
Don't wanna start another fire
Don't wanna know another kiss
Baby unless they are your lips
Do you still remember his touch? The fire? His kiss? His lips? Nobody can take those memories away from you. Where you can, remember them fondly and smile. Who is to say that we will never feel those again. Either we wait until we see them again, or he sends us distractions to help bide the time. I don't know what your husband wanted for you, but mine said to me to marry someone if I fell in love with him. I have always struggled with that instruction. That message was one of his parting wishes. You can never love anybody the same or better. It would just be different. It's been 5 years now without him. How are you feeling? I have heard people speak of grief coming in waves and that's true. Nobody knows when those waves pick up with wind and then it takes on another form altogether. Everyone's experiences are different. There are no awards for best recovery from a traumatic season of grief.
Don't wanna give my heart away
To another stranger
Don't let another day begin
Won't even let the sunlight in
Oh I'll never love again
Never love again
Never love again
Oh I'll never love again
I hope that you have started to let the sunlight in. We forget to go out into the sunlight while the world keeps turning and turning and turning. We forget to turn ourselves too while we're out there in the world, and learn to face the sunlight in all of the directions that it falls and on all parts of our body that it touches and warms. How do we keep ourselves motivated enough to start another day, to let another day begin without him? It's a day by day process isn't it. We will have good days. We will have bad days. We may even have funny days to counter those sad days. But we must always allow another day to begin, we owe this to ourselves and the notion of how to live without him. Each new day means a new beginning of something else that we can't do with him. You might divide your life into before he died and after he died. We don't need to love again right now. Nobody knows when love arrives at our doorsteps these days. But I'm pretty sure he would want you to be happy and he wouldn't want you to say, "I'll never love again". . .