Spouse Grief Quotes

Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can't you see who I truly am?

Every relationship that has hit a crossroads has asked, “What is it that you want from me?

You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love "in the bank" to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.

Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding. Didn't Roman generals hire slaves to march beside them in a triumphant parade and remind them that they too would die? Even your narrator, one morning after what should have been a happy occasion, was found shivering at the end of the bed (spouse: "I really wish you weren't crying right now"). Don't little children, awakened one morning and told, "Now you're five!" - don't they wail at the universe's descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death - shouldn't we all wail to the stars?

WIDOW. The word consumes itself, said Sylvia Plath, who consumed herself.

I realized, it is not the time that heals, but what we do within that time that creates positive change.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer—from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

anyone who’s ever lost a parent, child, lover, spouse, or close friend, knows that grief is one of the most powerful emotional forces there is—powerful enough to shatter the self we’ve carefully constructed.

The best advice that I got during counseling: Don't judge your spouse's grief response. Give them the freedom to grieve their own way. - Rachel Crawford

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

It’s not that motherhood is out of reach, it’s that it’s just out of reach. It’s not that motherhood didn’t happen, it’s that it almost did and, in fact, still could. The difference between the grief of infertility and other reasons for mourning - the loss of a spouse, for example - is in that promise of ‘just,’ in ‘almost,’ in ‘still could.

Feel sorry for yourself. Sure, your tiny steel-ribbed mother told you never to do that, But who the hell is going to do it for you? "Piangi, piangi," the old man in the opera tells Violetta. "Cry, honey, cry." Do it right. Do it yourself.

If God didn't want men to cry, why did he give them tears?

Only through the significant loss of my loved ones have I truly begun to live. When their eyes closed, mine were opened.

One couple (they were college graduates) held long adult conversations with me in the big kitchen downstairs, until the husband went off to war. Then the wife who had been so charming and ready to smile changed into a silent shadow that played infrequently along the walls.

I can only be healed by the particular sweetness of a man who saw into my soul and climbed in anyway. Emerson said "Give all to love" and I reply, is there anything else one might do?

I love you. I want to know what you are going through, if not now, then some day I want to sit with you and hear it. My imagination is not big enough to comprehend the emotions you are having. How small and insignificant all of this worldly stuff must seem to you. Can you talk? You must miss him intensely. You must think about him in every moment. Which is harder for you, being alone or being in the world of people? Life must feel surreal to you.

During the course of the day, he said, each spouse had confessed independently to him to taking antidepressants but didn’t want the other to know. It turned out that they were hiding the same medication in the same house. No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto.

Once over dinner I told her, of course he loved you! how could you doubt it? and she burst into tears, But he died!

Our grief mirrors our love.

You are my emergency contact. This is the emergency! My life is burning down!

I don't need again to learn the bitter lesson that everything I love is a flame between two fingers, no act undone, no word unsaid.

How are you? I'm shattered, thanks, how are you? I walk aimlessly through the rooms of my house, what have you been up to? I have woken up in the middle of the last 240 nights in a heart-pounding sweat, what's new with you? I sometimes wish I would never wake up, have you been on vacation this year? I ache for the arms of my sweetheart to hold me tight, how's your family? I feel barren and useless and creepy and mundane, seen any good movies lately? I'm terrified that I'll feel this way forever, I like that sweater you're wearing. I keep seeing his body on the hospital gurney, don't you love this weather. My broken heart is in my throat, let's do lunch. I'm so completely and utterly tired of being sad, thanks, how are you?

Living in Greece I learned why so many women wore black: a year for parents, for a husband forever, telling the neighbors take care of me, I am weak with grief, I have turned to ash inside.

You who have never “been there” in the throes of grief, have no idea what is going on inside the head of the grieving spouse: the scattered thoughts, the constant worry that we will forget something or someone in our fog-induced state, that strange feeling of not quite “being all there” when out in social situations, the pall that covers everything, like a cloak of sadness that never lifts.

Sorrow: Grief is frequently accompanied by profound sorrow and longing for the deceased. As you contemplate the memories and moments you shared with the deceased, remembering them can induce waves of sadness.

Yes, He was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If you are grieving, He can feel it with you. For the lonely one—the widow or widower, the divorced—He understands what it is to be alone, to feel that a part of yourself has been literally torn away. Studies show that the two greatest stress-producing factors to body, mind, and emotions are the death of a spouse and divorce. In some ways, divorce can be worse. The death of a spouse, though painful, can be a clean wound. Divorce often leaves a dirty, infected wound, throbbing with pain. Jesus understands when a single parent is trying to be husband and wife, mother and father, all in one.

Look, it's like falling out of a twenty-story building. All your good friends, they try to puff themselves up for you as soft as possible, But they're still only couch pillows. They may save your life when you hit them, But you're still gonna break every bone in your body.

I have yet to meet one widow who hasn't changed in monumental ways as she has coped with her loss. Most of us have gotten to the point where we are not the "pleasers" we once were. We say what we think, we realize that life is precious, and we don't have time to be anything less than who we really are.

Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful dispair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy.

I love you. How many times have you been asked, "How are you" today? It's a dreadful question. It's an absurd question. Knowing you and seeing what has happened in your life makes me stop in my tracks and catch myself before I ask anyone that question again. How the hell can you answer that question in the aisle of a supermarket? Come back to the house, you say. Bring your toothbrush and call your boss. You will need a week to hear the complete answer. And you will never be the same if you listen. It's the question that the entire human race reduces itself to each and every day, in each and every encounter, and without the intention of ever truly hearing the answer.

I became very good at protecting all who would ask. How are you? I'm all right. I'm fine. I'm hanging in there. I'm feeling OK. Thanks for asking. I'm good. I'm doing well. I'm a little tired. I'm handling things. I'm fine, thanks to all of you. I'm getting better. I'm keeping busy. I'm making progress. Fine, better, well, good and thank you for asking.

Many people experience the loss of a pet as a more painful experience than the death of a family member or friend. For many of us, the love we share with animals is simple, pure, and unconditional, whereas our love for another human being reflects the history we have shared together--the good times and the disappointments. For many, love for a parent, a sibling, or a spouse is complex and conflicted.

Several years ago I was lecturing in British Columbia. Dr [Simon] Wessely was speaking and he gave a thoroughly enjoyable lecture on M.E. and CFS. He had the hundreds of staff physicians laughing themselves silly over the invented griefs of the M.E. and CFS patients who according to Dr Wessely had no physical illness what so ever but a lot of misguided imagination. I was appalled at his sheer effectiveness, the amazing control he had over the minds of the staid physicians….His message was very clear and very simple. If I can paraphrase him: “M.E. and CFS are non-existent illnesses with no pathology what-so-ever. There is no reason why they all cannot return to work tomorrow. The next morning I left by car with my crew and arrived in Kelowna British Columbia that afternoon. We were staying at a patient’s house who had severe M.E. with dysautanomia and was for all purposes bed ridden or house bound most of the day. That morning she had received a phone call from her insurance company in Toronto. (Toronto is approximately 2742 miles from Vancouver). The insurance call was as follows and again I paraphrase: “Physicians at a University of British Columbia University have demonstrated that there is no pathological or physiological basis for M.E. or CFS. Your disability benefits have been stopped as of this month. You will have to pay back the funds we have sent you previously. We will contact you shortly with the exact amount you owe us”. That night I spoke to several patients or their spouses came up to me and told me they had received the same message. They were in understandable fear. What is important about this story is that at that meeting it was only Dr Wessely who was speaking out against M.E. and CFS and how … were the insurance companies in Toronto and elsewhere able to obtain this information and get back to the patients within a 24 hour period if Simon Wessely was not working for the insurance industry… I understand that it was also the insurance industry who paid for Dr Wessely’s trip to Vancouver.

We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding. Didn’t Roman generals hire slaves to march beside them in a triumphant parade and remind them that they too would die? Even your narrator, one morning after what should have been a happy occasion, was found shivering at the end of the bed (spouse: “I really wish you weren’t crying right now”). Don’t little children, awakened one morning and told, “Now you’re five!”—don’t they wail at the universe’s descent into chaos?

Melancholy isn’t, of course, a disorder that needs to be cured. It’s a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face to face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start. We have not been singled out. Marrying anyone, even the most suitable of beings, comes down to a case of identifying which variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: “We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.” After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: “We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves.” Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, “I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents.” Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.

The conduct of a new sedoretu is to some extent, and wisely, prescribed by custom and sanctioned by religion. The first night after the ceremony of marriage belongs to the Morning and Evening couples; the second night to the Day and Night couples. Thereafter the four spouses may join as and when they please, but always and only by invitation given and accepted, and the arrangements are to be known to all four. Four souls and bodies and all the years of their four lives to come are in the balance in each of those decisions and invitations; passion, negative and positive, must find its channels, and trust must be established, lest the whole structure fail to found itself solidly, or destroy itself in selfishness and jealousy and grief.

The world is full of widows--several among my closer friends. We have each known that grim rite of passage, have engaged with grief and loss, and have not exactly emerged but found a way of living after and beyond. It is an entirely changed life, for anyone who has been in a long marriage--forty-one years, for me: alone in bed, alone most of the time, without that presence towards which you turned for advice, reassurance, with whom you shared the good news and the bad. Every decision now taken alone; no one to defuse anxieties. And a thoroughly commonplace experience--everywhere, always--so get on with it and don't behave as though you are uniquely afflicted. I didn't tell myself that at the time, and I doubt if it would have helped if I had, but it is what I have come--not so much to feel as to understand.

So, here is my definition of a codependent: A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior. The other person might be a child, an adult, a lover, a spouse, a brother, a sister, a grandparent, a parent, a client, or a best friend. He or she could be an alcoholic, a drug addict, a mentally or physically ill person, a normal person who occasionally has sad feelings, or one of the people mentioned earlier. But, the heart of the definition and recovery lies not in the other person—no matter how much we believe it does. It lies in ourselves, in the ways we have let other people’s behavior affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the obsessing, the controlling, the obsessive “helping,” caretaking, low self-worth bordering on self-hatred, self-repression, abundance of anger and guilt, peculiar dependency on peculiar people, attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, other-centeredness that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process

to be more confidence you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about what other people think of you Confidence is not something you feel or possess, it's something others use to describe what they see when they look at you Forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so what they're thinking You are the only the person you actually are; you may not may not be the person they actually want Because all of us are made not only of what we have but of what we lost. And loss is not a subtraction. As an experience, it is an addition. You do not need to work through your past so you can heal. You need to move forward and then you're as healed as you're likely to be Pain can make you want to die. Discomfort can make you want to kill. Chronic discomfort itself can be deadly Letting go of a dream because it cannot be yours is not failing. If you have children and your spouse is abusing them physically, mentally, or sexually, leave now. It never takes courage to leave. It takes love. ..everything there is was born from a collision. Inside every single thing that lives is a debt to a distant star that died. Nothing new is ever created without one thing colliding into another

In 2022, New York Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren decried a culture of divorcing for unhappiness, writing, “I want to normalize significant periods of confusion, exhaustion, grief and unfulfillment in marriage. There’s an older couple I know who are in their fifth decade of marriage. They are funny and kind and, by almost any standard, the picture of #relationshipgoals. Early on in our marriage they told us, ‘There are times in marriage when the Bible’s call to love your enemies and the call to love your spouse are the same call.’ ” Life is, of course, not easy, and no one is going to like their partner every day. But Warren’s column makes misery in marriage sound like a necessary evil of being partnered with a man. It’s not. I refuse to believe that it has to be that way. I have two dear friends who I have known for over twenty years; we fight sometimes and disagree. Between us we’ve had three divorces and four marriages and three children. Never once have they felt like the enemy to me. And if it is that way, if the experience of being with a man means I hate him for at least a third of our marriage and he hates me, too, I’d rather not have it. No, thank you. There is no benefit to that martyrdom. To me, columns like Warren’s sound like the mentality that enables hazing rituals and cults where they sacrifice one of their own every fortnight. I was miserable, so you should be, too. I do not want that curse. I want happiness.

Godly grief readily confesses. After seeing your sin, and sorrowing over your sin, the worst thing you can do is to try stuffing your sin, hoping nobody ever finds out who you really are. Turns out, the best way to avoid being found out a fake is just not to be one—to be open with people about your struggles, while being equally as open in your praise of God for what He’s making of you, despite your many messes and problems. This is where the church comes in so beautifully, because it gets us around people who can help us carry the nagging issues of our hearts—people to whom we can confess our battles with sin and confess our need for a Savior—while we’re doing the same for them. When the only person that truly knows all about us is the person who uses our hairbrush, we are easy pickings for the Enemy, ripe for being outmaneuvered and outsmarted. That’s how we remain slaves to our repeated failures, by basically resisting the redeeming love of God and the needed, encouraging support of others. Because even if we’re as much as 99 percent known (or much less, as is more often the case) to our spouse, our friends, our family, and the people around us, we are still not fully known. We’re still hiding out. We’re still covering up. We don’t want them to know everything. But true sorrow over sin begs to be vented—both vertically to God and horizontally to others. So mark this down: You have no shot at experiencing real change in life if you’re habitually protecting your image, hyping your spiritual brand, and putting out the vibe that you’re a lot more unfazed by temptation than the reality you know and live would suggest. Even Satan himself cannot succeed at clobbering you with condemnation when the stuff he’s accusing you of doing is the same stuff you’ve been honestly admitting before God and others and trusting the Lord for His help with. That’s some of the best action you can take against the sin in your life. That’s responsible repentance.

May God’s people never eat rabbit or pork (Lev. 11:6–7)? May a man never have sex with his wife during her monthly period (Lev. 18:19) or wear clothes woven of two kinds of materials (Lev. 19:19)? Should Christians never wear tattoos (Lev. 19:28)? Should those who blaspheme God’s name be stoned to death (Lev. 24:10–24)? Ought Christians to hate those who hate God (Ps. 139:21–22)? Ought believers to praise God with tambourines, cymbals, and dancing (Ps. 150:4–5)? Should Christians encourage the suffering and poor to drink beer and wine in order to forget their misery (Prov. 31:6–7)? Should parents punish their children with rods in order to save their souls from death (Prov. 23:13–14)? Does much wisdom really bring much sorrow and more knowledge more grief (Eccles. 1:18)? Will becoming highly righteous and wise destroy us (Eccles. 7:16)? Is everything really meaningless (Eccles. 12:8)? May Christians never swear oaths (Matt. 5:33–37)? Should we never call anyone on earth “father” (Matt. 23:9)? Should Christ’s followers wear sandals when they evangelize but bring no food or money or extra clothes (Mark 6:8–9)? Should Christians be exorcising demons, handling snakes, and drinking deadly poison (Mark 16:15–18)? Are people who divorce their spouses and remarry always committing adultery (Luke 16:18)? Ought Christians to share their material goods in common (Acts 2:44–45)? Ought church leaders to always meet in council to issue definitive decisions on matters in dispute (Acts 15:1–29)? Is homosexuality always a sin unworthy of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10)? Should unmarried men not look for wives (1 Cor. 7:27) and married men live as if they had no wives (1 Cor. 7:29)? Is it wrong for men to cover their heads (1 Cor. 11:4) or a disgrace of nature for men to wear long hair (1 Cor. 11:14)? Should Christians save and collect money to send to believers in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1–4)? Should Christians definitely sing psalms in church (Col. 3:16)? Must Christians always lead quiet lives in which they work with their hands (1 Thess. 4:11)? If a person will not work, should they not be allowed to eat (2 Thess. 3:10)? Ought all Christian slaves always simply submit to their masters (reminder: slavery still exists today) (1 Pet. 2:18–21)? Must Christian women not wear braided hair, gold jewelry, and fine clothes (1 Tim. 2:9; 1 Pet. 3:3)? Ought all Christian men to lift up their hands when they pray (1 Tim. 2:8)? Should churches not provide material help to widows who are younger than sixty years old (1 Tim. 5:9)? Will every believer who lives a godly life in Christ be persecuted (2 Tim. 3:12)? Should the church anoint the sick with oil for their healing (James 5:14–15)? The list of such questions could be extended.

The killing of a police officer has a ripple effect across the nation, even the world. It’s like the wave at a ballgame but you can’t see it if you aren’t at the game. Every law enforcement family in the world is at the game daily, each officer who falls represents one less person in the stadium. The stadium seems smaller each time. Spouses, children and parents breathe a heavy sigh, a sigh filled with grief for the profession and the fallen. A sigh hiding a smaller one that thinks “Thank God it wasn’t mine this time.

If an adult is married to an abusive spouse, divorce is a sensible solution. Yet, there is normal grief in the decision-making to sever the relationship. Longing for the positive times with the former spouse is balanced against knowing the destructiveness of abuse. Similarly, if a partner callously abandons an adult, grief is normal. Even though the partner may have lacked qualities like loyalty, commitment, or sensitivity, the degree of felt pain is not initially measured by the worthiness of the partner. Only after grieving do people start to realize that their partner’s abandonment might be a bit of luck! The legal and emotional ties of children to their birthparents are similar to marriage. Even though their parents may have abandoned, abused, or neglected them, children will not calibrate their love or longing by the worthiness of their lost parents. Methods that are most successful for grieving children do not emphasize parent replacement, especially in the beginning of placement. Parents who acknowledge that their children are still missing and loving their former parents affirm their children. Parents do not shame their children in any way for their devotion. Instead, parents say that it sounds like the children loved that previous parent the best they could. Sometimes questions give parents a sense of the degree of resolution that a child has about their loss. Examples are, “Did you have a chance to say goodbye? Are you still thinking that you will move back? What might happen so that you could go back?” It helps to ease children into bonding when parents say that they will be giving their children all the love they need, and that children can still care for birthparents or former foster parents. Parents can give matter-of-fact information that all children need someone to love them day-to-day, even if children want to be in another home.

One day, when St. Joseph was full of anxious doubts and saw her coming out of her oratory, he noticed more particularly this evident change, without being able to explain away what he saw so clearly with his eyes. The man of God was wounded to his inmost heart by an arrow of grief, unable to ward off the force of evidence, which at the same time wounded his soul. The principal cause of his grief was the most chaste, and therefore the most intense love with which he cherished his most faithful Spouse, and in which he had from the beginning given over to her his whole heart. Moreover,

St. Joseph could not entirely conceal his cruel sorrow, and therefore he often appeared to be in doubt and sad suspense. Sometimes, carried away by his grief, he spoke to his heavenly Spouse with some degree of severity, such as he had not shown before. This

No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto.

No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto. But what are we so afraid of? It’s not as if we’re going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too. There’s beauty in those places. But we have to look in there to see it.

I remember hearing the writer Andrew Solomon tell a story about a married couple he’d met at a conference. During the course of the day, he said, each spouse had confessed independently to him to taking antidepressants but didn’t want the other to know. It turned out that they were hiding the same medication in the same house. No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto.

Meet Curly and Mo,” I said. “I want you to divide into two groups and form an orderly queue to give these two a bit of stick. Basically, do what you like to them. Punch them, kick them, knee them in the knackers. Pretend they're your boss, your spouse, or whoever's been giving you grief lately.

From a medical standpoint, the third and the most probable explanation is that Jesus was indeed dead, and what his disciples experienced were mere hallucinations evoked by the grief over the loss of their beloved teacher. It is clinically known as “Post-Bereavement Hallucinations Experiences” or PBHE.

How soon is too soon to date? I heard about a woman in England who lost her husband and began dating his best friend four weeks later. People were shocked at how quickly her new romance started. Her mother-in-law cut off communication with her and many of her friends did too. "Blame me if you like," the woman said, "but grief hits people in different ways and I have no regrets." When you are widowed, people pity you and want your sorrow to end. But if you start dating, sometimes they judge you and think maybe your sorrow ended just a wee bit too soon. A childhood friend of mine who is now a rabbi told me that in the Jewish religion, mourning for a parent, child, or sibling is a year, but mourning for a spouse is just thirty days. "The rabbis wanted people to move forward," he said.

Grief is a necessary process. When your spouse dies, you can't avoid it. But remember, it is a process. And with every process, there is a goal. Go ahead-grieve. Grieve heartily. Grieve so that you can live and love again.

No one cries very much unless something of real worth is lost. So grieving is a celebration of the depth of the union. Tears are the jewels of remembrance-sad, but glistening with the beauty of the past.

In your care I will be released from my worries” (CIL 11.137). In a few brief sentences, this man’s colorful life, during which he passed from freedom to slavery to freedom and ultimately to prosperity, is memorialized. An aspect of life that these tombstones bring to light is the strong emotions that tied together spouses, family members, and friends. One grave marker records a husband’s grief for his young wife: “To the eternal memory of Blandina Martiola, a most blameless girl, who lived eighteen years, nine months, five days. Pompeius Catussa, a Sequanian citizen and a plasterer, dedicates this monument to his wife, who was incomparable and very kind to him. She lived with him five years, six months, eighteen days without any shadow of a fault. You who read this, go bathe in the baths of Apollo as I used to do with my wife. I wish I still could” (CIL 1.1983). The affection that some parents felt for their children is also reflected in these inscriptions: “Spirits who live in the underworld, lead innocent Magnilla through the groves and the Elysian Fields directly to your places of rest. She was snatched away in her eighth year by cruel fate while she was still enjoying the tender time of childhood. She was beautiful and sensitive, clever, elegant, sweet, and charming beyond her years. This poor child who was deprived of her life so quickly must be mourned with perpetual lament and tears” (CIL 6.21846). Some Romans seemed more concerned with ensuring that their bodies would lie undisturbed after death than with recording their accomplishments while alive. An inscription of this type states: “Gaius Tullius Hesper had this tomb built for himself, as a place where his bones might be laid. If anyone damages them or removes them from here, may he live in great physical pain for a long time, and when he dies, may the gods of the underworld deny entrance to his spirit” (CIL 6.36467). Some tombstones offer comments that perhaps preserve something of their authors’ temperaments. One terse inscription observes: “I was not. I was. I am not. I care not” (CIL 5.2893). Finally, a man who clearly enjoyed life left a tombstone that included the statement: “Baths, wine, and sex ruin our bodies. But what makes life worth living except baths, wine, and sex?” (CIL 6.15258). Perhaps one of the greatest values of these tombstones is the manner in which they record the actual feelings of individuals, and demonstrate the universality across time, cultures, and geography of basic emotions such as love, hate, jealousy, and pride. They also preserve one of the most complicated yet subtle characteristics of human beings—our enjoyment of humor. Many of the messages were plainly drafted to amuse and entertain the reader, and the fact that some of them can still do so after 2,000 years is one of the best testimonials to the humanity shared by the people of the ancient and the modern worlds.

Jane has been dead for more than two decades. Earlier this year I grieved for her in a way I had never grieved before. At eighty-six, I was sick and thought I was dying. Twenty and twenty-one years ago, every day of her dying for eighteen months, I stayed by her side. It was miserable that Jane should die so young, and it was redemptive that I could be with her every hour of every day. Last February I grieved again, this time that she would not sit over me as I died.

Pray for your child Parents who are suffering pain and grief in their relationship with a rebellious child tend to interpret things through the lens of their pain and grief. This is understandable because we are emotional beings, but it is not helpful for healing the relationship and does not facilitate godly prayer. Prayer should not become a digest of our desire for our child’s change, and the ways that we are hurt and grieved. When that happens, prayer becomes more about us than the lost and needy child. Certainly, prayer for our own or our spouse’s agony over rebellious children is appropriate as we struggle with these emotions, but even in those appropriate personal seasons of prayer, God’s comfort and provision of Christ for our loss must be our focus. Pray that you will be freed from your preoccupation with your own devastation so that you can see clearly to pray for specific needs in your child. Think about the misery, lostness, guilt, and loneliness behind your child’s growling and disrespect. As you pray for the hold of sin to be broken in your child’s heart, pray that this weary, heavy-laden sinner will find rest for his hurting soul. Pray that God’s Spirit will bless your efforts to disarm your child’s sense of justification for their thoughts or feelings against you as you do the work of listening and asking for forgiveness. Pray that God will do that awakening work that only he can do by his Spirit, to authenticate the truth of the gospel to your child’s heart. Pray that you will have the endurance and confidence in God to see this process through, regardless of how long you must endure.

I agree, the loss of a child is far too complex an issue, to place in a simplistic box of aged spouses dying from natural causes.

She says I don't know what to say, as if she'd been raised in the woods by wolves.

It's hard to be a widow. People are afraid of me. They don't know what to say. Who knows what to say? I don't know what to say.

All moments are hard because I am constantly reminded that he is gone. What do you say in the face of such a brutal reality? Say, I'm so-o-o sorry, and then touch me.

What if that something that serves to preserve the memory of you is me?

I won't repeat the dream in which you leave me. Let's just say I know the world, how it alters in an instant, that I awaken sick in remorse and dread.

No one knows you're gone. The police still want donations from you And they summoned you for jury duty. The Economist wants you to take advantage of an early renewal offer And so does National Geographic. An acquaintance asks how you are doing (I shake my head) And a new friend wonders About your picture on my phone. They didn't know you. Because if they did, They would know That it is a different world now.

I know how you feel. I hope you're keeping busy. You look good. You will see the gift in this tragedy. Time will heal. The holidays will be tough. It will get easier. I'm glad to hear you're doing well. You're a strong person. Have you gone away at all? How are the kids? How's his mother doing? Call me if you need anything, anything at all.

I love you. I'm probably going to fail you. My life is full of distractions and I need to live my life. You understand this about me and everyone else, more than I can ever imagine. We need to live our lives. And so I fear that I am not there for you. And my own guilt about that is hard to face. Being with you scares me and makes me uneasy. It's hard to be around truth manifest. I'm not strong enough to hear your truth, know what you know and try to give you what you need. If I tell you this fear, will you still love me? I just want to sit with you, walk with you, hear your voice, hold your hand, be in your home, look at your face, watch you pet the cat, and beg you to trust me.

Interregnum of old life and new. Angry with you for this dislocation. I loved you in my other life.

How much she's learned through love about everything, including that quadrant of self visible only to others but exceptionally accessed through the one who knows her best.

Days are not the way they were when he was alive.

Each day for me is filled with things that I used to look forward to in the morning. Now they feel empty and stressful. Handling my life by myself is sad for me. I liked being part of a team. I liked having someone else to share my day with every night.

Some things you have to do for yourself if you want them done right. Ironing your favorite dress with the tricky collar, Making hot chocolate the way you like it. Feeling sorry for you. Nobody else can do it properly.

You think you've stopped crying And then the blues come back, You wonder what brought them: The red pen? The wind in the yard? The plaid shirt in the bank? Your buried grief seeps to the surface, Like oil under tar sands. Let it go. It's the rich black residue of the past, Dead life becomes this stuff that sticks to the soles of your feet, Welling up when it damned well pleases. Let it go.

love you, and I know what will make you happy. Sexual ‘liberation’ is really one more brand of enslavement. It advertises thrills but delivers grief. A long and faithful marriage to your spouse will bring you peace and delight that are beyond price—and you and I will be drawn ever closer.

Frances, sitting with hands folded and face blank, recollecting not in tranquility but in ripe howling grief her husband Steven dead now eight months two weeks one day.

Show how to deal with grief healthily: As a widow or widower, you may be in a unique situation to show your children or other people who may be grieving how to deal with grief healthily. It's important to put yourself first and show good ways to deal with grief, like getting help, letting your feelings out, and being kind to yourself. By showing others how to deal with their grief in a good way, you can help them as well.

We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto. But what are we so afraid of? It’s not as if we’re going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too.

Be Honest If you have been wronged, you have every right to be angry with your partner and express that anger. Trying to keep things inside will only suffocate you more. You need to let your partner know how hurt you are and how you expect to be repaired. A lack of communication can only make matters worse where the other partner will think you haven’t forgiven them yet. Let them know everything honesty like how much time do you need, if you feel comfortable with them in the same room or not, or how you plan to work this out. The more open you are about your emotions and feelings, the better for you. Besides, it is always a good idea to vent things out so that your mind takes a break from all that thinking. Let Them Witness Your Pain Sometimes, the partner that has wronged their spouse is so paralyzed with guilt that they keep asking for forgiveness over and over again. They must understand that what you are going through is painful and is a result of what they have done. Now they must bear witness to it and allow you time to grieve completely. They should know not to keep insisting on forgiving you or trying too hard to make things right. Don’t Expect Cheap Forgiveness Asking for forgiveness over and over again can also add to the frustration the cheated partner feels and just to get the cheating partner out of their hair, they might vent out their anger saying that they have forgiven them when, in reality, it isn’t the case. This stops the process of grief midway and one never fully comes out of it. On the other hand, the cheating partner might take is a weakness and use it against you for any future infidelities. Therefore, be patient with your words and don’t act with anger. If there is nothing nice you can offer in terms of words, remain silent and let your partner know that you need more time.

Affirmation: Because my love is deep, my grief will be intense. Tears are natural, and healthy.

recognized whiteness itself in part to those nonwhite groups.” —— The institution of slavery created a crippling distortion of human relationships where people on one side were made to perform the role of subservience and to sublimate whatever innate talents or intelligence they might have had. They had to suppress their grief over the loss of children or spouses whose bodies had not died but in a way had died because they had been torn from them never to be seen again and at the hands of the very people they were forced to depend

Loss affects marriages When a child dies, the family changes. All family relationships are affected, including marriages. Men and women tend to grieve differently. Many men are activity-project grievers. They solve problems, build things, tear stuff apart, exercise heavily, or head to the shooting range. Most women tend to be verbal-relational grievers. They seek connections, have coffee, talk, share, cry, text, and email. Men do things. Women relate. We speak different grief languages. This makes it even more challenging to communicate well during this time. Finding ways to grieve together is yet another obstacle (or opportunity) we get to face and tackle. Both spouses are chest-deep in heavy grief. Routines have changed. Emotions are running high. Our usual patterns of touch, physical affection, and sexual intimacy

He said that by six months, more than half of people who lose a spouse are past what psychologists classify as “acute grief.” Adam convinced me that while my grief would have to run its course, my beliefs and actions could shape how quickly I moved through the void and where I ended up.

No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We'll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, 'Get me out of this conversation, pronto.' But what are we so afraid of? It's not as if we're going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too. There's beauty in those places. But we have to look in there to see it.