TheBanyanTree: Circle of Grief

[Margaret R. Kramer]

10/20/98
Hi you lovely person:
         You are my reason for living,
         You are my one and only love,
         You are the one that takes my breath away,
         You are the one that can do anything with me,
         You, you, you, you, you, you, you,

         Living. Love.away with me,
         You are the one,
         When you have your time alone,
         I get lonely for you to be with me.

         But even though YOU are not here
         Many hours without you in the day,
         Then when you are finally home,
         Time passes too fast,

         But you see my love for you will never end,
         I will wait for you until the end of the world.
         Your wish is my command,
         I will wait for you.

See what happens when I have time to think?
This is just one of those lazy days when I can’t get started.
The words might not be right but my love is in there!
I LOVE YOU!
Ray

The spouse loss grief group has expanded into social outings.  We’ve gone to
lunch on Saturdays after our discussion group.  We’ve had a picnic at Lake
Harriet.  We’ve met at the Dakota Bar and Grill, a great jazz club in
Minneapolis for a night cozying up to jazz while mourning our spouses.  This
past Friday night, we met at an Asian restaurant.

So far, we’re just the widows, although a widower joins us from time to
time.  Joe does not come, although he’s welcome to.  Younger women, in our
50s, missing our husbands so much we ache, yet we also ache for
companionship.  We find very few of our friends want to listen to us talk
about our dead spouses, but we find in each other almost a joy in being to
tell our spouses’ stories again and again.  I love talking and writing and
thinking about Ray.  He dances along all the time in my mind, and it’s so
wonderful to find people who let him dance along with them, too, while I
dance with their husbands.

There’s a fall feeling in the air and I’m feeling a need of pulling Ray
closer to me, have his spirit warm me like a blanket.  It was a rainy and
coolish day today and I made vegetable soup, baked bread and brownies.  Joe
came over and we ate by candlelight in the kitchen.  Our spouses are never
far from us and we talk endlessly of Ray and Alice.  But, to be honest, I’m
hoping a day will come that we can let them rest in peace and our
conversation centers on our current activities and not the past ones.

Ray would have spent the day watching football and he would have been upset
by the Vikings loss, and the Twins loss, too.  I missed him today and I
cried a lot.  Having a boyfriend doesn’t change the grief cycle, Joe just
makes it more bearable.

But I know the other widows miss their spouses, too.  And like me, are
pulling them closer as fall begins.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com
www.polarispublications.com

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of
life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they
continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.  It
is as though they were traveling abroad.  ~Marcel Proust
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