Grief is Selfish
It’s the most personal thing in life and only you know how you feel.
At some point in the grieving process, and this starts early during a terminal illness, you need to admit, and accept the idea that part of your grief is selfish. It is unique to you. It has never been experienced quite in the same way by anyone else. Your grief is as individually your own as the person you are grieving for was unique in their own way.
Well-meaning friends and relatives may heap the inevitable platitudes on you that they know what you are going through, but they don’t really know what you are going through. They may be mourning the same person as a friend or relative, and this doesn’t lessen their own grief, but they weren’t married to them, and they aren’t missing them the same way you are.
They didn’t travel through the same life and time together. They didn’t share the same triumphs and tragedies; the ebb and flow of daily life that takes disparate pieces and weaves them together to make a fabric that is far stronger than the tensile strength of its individual strands.
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” ~ Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Others may have lost a spouse, but it still doesn’t mean they know how you’re feeling. They and their spouses were different people, lived different lives than you did, and no matter how connected they were, their lives and loves were different from what you shared.
My husband was an energetic go-getter. He hated not having something to do all the time; he wasn’t good at sitting and visiting. Consequently, our interactions with friends usually involved some form of physical activity and having places to go and things to do.
One of our friends referred to him affectionately as the Energizer Rabbit, and it was particularly apt. I actually liked the reference.
Living with the Energizer Rabbit might not have suited many people, but he was my Energizer Rabbit. Not anyone else’s. Mine. And I’m selfish.
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