Squeezing Numbness and Boundless Sweetness

A dear friend sends me a book called,

How to Survive the Loss of a Love.

On the first page it says,

If you are experiencing a loss and are in need of emotional first aid turn directly to page 20.

This is page 20.

YOU WILL SURVIVE

You will get better.

No doubt about it.

The healing process has a beginning a middle and an end.

Keep in mind at the beginning that there is an end. It's not that far off. You will heal.

Nature is on your side and nature is a powerful ally.

Tell yourself often 'I am alive. I will survive."

You are alive.

You will survive.

I want this to comfort me. I know it's true. It just feels like it's true for someone else at the moment. I feel quite astonished by this deep well of mourning which keeps surging up.....knocking me off keel ...wrapping itself around me like a light shroud .....so it's hard to see through........hard to feel anything except a kind of squeezing  numbness. Which I hold inside while I do normal things like  getting dressed and washing up and registering my husband's death at the bank.

Sometimes I can't talk without crying. But today in the company of my great niece it is impossible to be unaffected by her boundless sweetness as we throw large pieces of sliced brown bread to the ducks and the squawking gulls...... as she asks to wear my necklace...... as we hit brambles away from the path with a long stick...... as she jumps up and down on her parents' bed, squealing with laughter..... and as her grandfather carries her on his back up and down the corridor, her smile wider than the sun.

So maybe the end of this journey will be in the  slow clocking up of all the small and beautiful moments...which will start to thaw out the squeezing numbness inside....till one day I will notice I am surviving. And I am still alive.