by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: July 11, 2009

People say that you never get over the death of a loved one. My husband was 31 when he died and had never been ill. Going to bed late because of work commitments, by 2 in the morning, he was dead. There I was, at the age of 31, realizing that life as I knew it was gone. There are many negatives to being a widow. Of course, when you love someone and they have gone, there is a sadness which is hard to overcome and a kind of quietude that takes over your soul for a while. You question God. You question your beliefs and certainly question how you will live your life beyond that death.

It took me many years to actually suffer grief. Nineteen years after the death of my husband, I suddenly started to cry for no apparent reason. The tears were like huge blobs of water that came from deep inside me and the wailing of loss took me to a place I have never been before nor wish to again. By this time in life, I was living what I considered to be a fulfilled life. In actual fact, what I was living was an escape from the inevitability of grief.

What you gain when you lose someone and do go through the grief stages, as I was to learn in later life, is a wonderful sense of independence. Having said goodbye, and having let those tears pour, there's a sense of relief. Would he like who I turned out to be? Who knows? Would he accept the choices I made? Again, I have little notion. Would I be the same person that I am had I not met him. Here, I can state with a certainty that part of my completeness is due to knowing him and loving him.

The independence you gain when you lose someone isn't obvious at first, but what it does besides turning your life upside down is make you see how fragile life is, and makes you see beyond all the small stuff. Suddenly you become more compassionate. You become a nicer person, simply because you know that tomorrow, you may not get a second chance to try to be better. With that sense of self worth, the independence you gain is a valuable one, which allows for people around you, but doesn't allow others to interfere with your belief system.

My faith in God is strong. I enjoyed the laughs of doing things I was never allowed to. High heeled shoes comes to mind though these kind of independent choices are such a small part of the independence. It isn't having a choice of which channel you watch on the TV, or choosing which car you buy or which house you live in. The kind of independence which comes from loss is a lasting and sustaining one, which makes you into a more compassionate and capable person who can cope when the odds are against you.

For all those out there reading this, hoping to glean a little faith in what happens during the process of loss, something very important happens, but only if you allow it. Loss teaches you the fragility of life. It teaches you how much the words you speak matter, and how much people around you mean. It teaches you that life is temporary, making you aware of each breathing moment. It teaches you to watch a sunset and soak it in.

It teaches you to appreciate that black cloud in the sky and watch it nurture the plants in the garden. The independence gained by acceptance of the inevitable whatever the personal sacrifice is what rewards you, since this independence is a lasting one, giving you strength for the rest of your life, and that in essence is what your loved one left as a heritage.

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