"Stop The World! I Want To Get Off!"

  A few years ago I lost my wife to cancer after 33 wonderfully happy and fulfilling years.” Stop the world I want to get off” was probably my first reaction to the terrible loss. This initial reaction was however tempered greatly by a wonderful son. He stayed with me for some weeks after the funeral until he returned to his home to get on with his life and career. It was at this time that emotions I had been feeling, really came to the fore. Sadness, remorse, guilt, with more anger and bitterness than I had felt for years. And so much more.

Friends were kind and supportive .But I still became angry and bitter when someone would say!”I know how you feel.” How could they? My anger was directed against myself. I felt that I was being selfish because I was mourning for MY loss and not for my wife. Thinking became muddled and I became irritable as periods of depression started to set in. In fact I came very close to wallowing in self pity.

Then a friend with more insight than most produced a copy of Heal your grief, accept your loss and love your life again
Within a few short pages I started to warm to the writing. It was practical, sometimes to the point of harshness but always truthful and written with great honesty.

Within a few short chapters I began to see a new way of dealing with bereavement and loss. It moved on from the way we had been conditioned to deal with the subject
to a more direct and logical way of acceptance and moving forward. It was helpful and enlightening yet in no way unfeeling or disrespectful. It offered the advice and guidance which I was in need of at the time. Don’t get me wrong. It does not attempt to turn one into an unfeeling robot and nor does it do so. It provides a map to help find the way through the maze of mixed and entwined emotions which attack and often confuse the mind at such times as these.
It is not brain washing and emotions are not dispassionately squeezed out of the way.
But it does gently but firmly put things back into a handleable perspective which helps the bereaved to face the future.

The anger has gone and been replaced by a gentle happiness. I now take great joy in my son’s achievement of reaching his goal. My wife would have been so proud. When I think of her now, (and there is not a day goes by that I do not) it is of the wonderful times we spent together and the crazy things we did. I will not deny that sometimes on some evening that I shed a few tears. But now they tears remembered happiness, tinged with sadness.

It probably true to say that I have indeed found life after death.

K. W. 

K.W. from the UK