LIFE IS MOVING ON

I saw a friend of mine recently who lost her mother within the past few months. I have commented before regarding how I feel about people like this. I view her as a widow. She is single and was very close to her mother and served as her caregiver in the last year of her life. In the process of healing she will walk a very similar road to what I have. As I talked to her about how she is doing, and whether she still had a good support system in place she proceeded to explain some changes in that system... a break down.

I am not sure why that happens. Why do things change? Perhaps you enter a world where you need to be sustained, you need to be held up - but the way your friends know how to do that is not the way you stand ready to receive it.

One of my best friends, who sustained me throughout the entire illness, who I could not have endured the process without her by my side, commented on that to me. She said that she was ready. She was prepared for me to cry on her shoulder. But that is not what I came looking for. My tears were reserved for the quiet stillness of the night. They rarely saw the light of day. I craved a piece of normalcy. I craved the happiness and joy that once illuminated from me. I wanted to have fun, to live life. This was not what she was ready for. I was up and down. When I was up, I needed to be held up and when I was down I wanted to be left there.

Life moves on. Every moment of every day as a widow your life is impacted by the void. Some days you feel alone in that memory. Every one else goes on and continues to function as if all is well. And inside there is a quiet crying out for some one to stop and realize your life is gone. Your life is not moving on, it is gone. And now from the dust and through the pain and tears you must create a new life.

My friend is on that path. She will make it. As most of us widows, she is strong. We are granted the strength to trod the path before us. And when we are not strong enough, God puts in our path someone to carry us.