A dear friend’s father has passed forward. Her mother is now without her other half.
I’ve though a lot about this for a few weeks now.
Her mother is without her other half.
There is no more pain, exhaustion, worry. But now there is emptiness.
The emptiness will be filled with other people and things, but never filled in completely. At least in my mind. How could I ever be whole again if my Husband moved forward before me?
We had a friend our age (48) pass suddenly at our church in January. How his widow is carrying on so beautifully is truly amazing to me. They have three kids, the youngest (twins) of which are sixth grade now. She and her husband were best friends and had a wonderful marriage. I hurt so badly for her. She is, like you say, filling in the gaps where she can, and doing way better than I could ever see myself doing, but it’s one of my worst nightmares, aside from losing a child. I do not know now how to make her hurt any less, except to offer friendship and support. A wonderful spouse is a true blessing, and I am so very grateful.
It’s like a broken bone. The bone eventually heals, but the break can’t be undone. Instead, it becomes a healed broken bone. It’s more fragile than it was in it’s unbroken state. Sometimes it hurts for no reason, you just wake up and it’s aching. Sometimes you do something in particular, maybe something new, maybe something you’d been doing for years and years before the break without a problem, but only now, it will begin to ache in response. If you try to protect it too much, it becomes more fragile and vulnerable, but if you try to go on as if it was never broken, the ache will become so severe and torturous that you will eventually not be able to function. It’s always there, though. It never goes away. It’s never as it was before the break.
So sorry for your friend. I think about the scenerio often and the word that always comes to mind is devistation. Our prayers are and will be with your friend and her family/friends who are going through this with her.
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