Widower Experiences Consuming Grief

My wife Susan died unexpectedly in April 1991, the Sunday after Easter. I could never have imagined beforehand how transformative an experience that would be. Nothing was true anymore but the truths of her death and my continued existence. I was shaken to my foundations, forced to decide what I would keep of myself and what I would throw away. Every aspect of my life was subject to review, from my occupation to my spiritual beliefs, from my choice of friends to my choice of doctors.

Although some friends were very supportive, for about a year I also attended a weekly grief support group at the Center for Attitudinal Healing. I needed to spend time with people who knew how uncontrollable and consuming grief could be, who wouldn’t ply me with explanations, consolation and advice. One of the guidelines of our group began with the words, “We recognize that love is listening.” I wanted to be listened to, and to hear other people’s stories as well.

Social niceties seemed pointless, and I gradually discarded some people from my life. I just could not bear the thought of having to relate to someone with whom I wasn’t deeply bonded. I let my voicemail answer the telephone so I didn’t have to speak to anyone, and I sometimes erased messages without even listening to them first. An acquaintance left a delicious tuna salad on my doorstep—because I made believe there was no one home when she knocked. Though I appreciated her gift, I never thanked her or even spoke to her again.

Different Models of Grief

Psychologists have defined the stages of grieving; different models of grief provide different names for them. However, there are no stages when we are in the middle of our grief.

There is only what we are feeling NOW. I could move from sobbing to a sense of peace to sobbing again in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I was terrified of pain, but more often of numbness. Occasionally, I hoped that a truck would accidentally run me over and kill me. For months afterwards, the shock of Susan’s death would unexpectedly hit me over the head, even as I slowly began to look forward with hope. Sometimes I would get mad at myself for this “backward slide.” I have since come to understand that nothing was wrong with my progress—only with my useless attempts to analyze it.

I needed answers to so many questions: Why did she have to die? What was I going to do with the rest of my life? How could I, alone, even keep up with our friends and the chores of daily living? I got better, as the poet Rainier Maria Rilke wrote, at “living the questions,” letting go and allowing the answers to come in their own time rather than searching for them too much. “Trust yourself” became almost like a mantra for me. I learned how to listen to my heart and to my intuition.

Widower Finds Poetry Healing

I began writing the day Susan died: keeping a journal, writing poetry, trying to document and express my grief and my transformation. It was the first time I’d done any writing in many years. Sometimes poetry was the only way to give words to the overwhelming emotions I struggled with.

In finding that I could express my feelings creatively, I discovered a whole side of myself that had been lying dormant. Writing gave me a new sense of strength and wholeness. Now when I look back, reading my poetry and journals, I can see how far I have come and remember what I went through. Doing that from time to time seems to have a healing quality of its own.

I wanted to read about others’ experience but found little published material that interested me. I understood my grief from the inside; I didn’t want to be “taught” about grief and the transformation I was going through. Anyway, I couldn’t concentrate on long texts, and often got bored after the first few pages. I yearned for honest experience and validation rather than guidance. Voices of the Grieving Heart grew out of my desire to publish something for people who felt the same way I did.

This book is a collection of poetry that shares the pain, growth, changes, healing and gifts that can come when people we love die. The contributors are from every walk of life.

Giving Words to Grief

Originally, I viewed this book as a project for my own healing and for the benefit of those who would read it. I soon learned that for many contributors, sending me their work was an important part of their healing as well. I received some very moving letters from people who opened up to me as if we had known each other for years. Several contributors told me that I was the first to read the poems they had submitted to me, but that they knew this book would be a good place for them.

In order to give words to an experience so personal and powerful as grief, we have to make ourselves very vulnerable. I believe that is where the healing begins—in being willing to open up and feel the sadness, the joy, the agonizing pain, the numbness, guilt, the losses and gains, all of it. Trust your heart. Take the time. The miracle is that in opening to our pain, however long it takes, we can become more whole than when we started.

I would never have begun, let alone completed, a project like this if I were still the person I was before Susan died. In her death I found the gift of my own life. In my grief I found a greater ability to love. May this book also help you to find the gifts that lie hidden in your pain, and may you find the courage to live your new life as fully as you can.

Excerpted from Mike Bernhardt’s book, Voices of the Grieving Heart: https://mikebernhardt.net/order

Read more from Mike Bernhardt: https://www.opentohope.com/writing-poems-can-heal/