Life After Death

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How many of you have lost a wife or a husband and felt that you have also lost your whole family?

For some unknown reason to me, when you lose a partner everyone thinks you have also lost your mind. You can't think for yourself, make rational decisions or enjoy life again.

If you want to be alone, they tell you it is sad to see you alone. You should get out more, meet someone new but if you go out and meet someone new, you are rushing into it, they are unsuitable or it is too soon.

When is too soon do you think? When you are ready or when all your friends and family are ready? And would anyone agree. Some even want to give you there blessing. As though you need it.

And why is it that friends and family suddenly think they can tell you how to run your life? Never, when your partner was alive, would they have questioned your decisions. The children did what they were told and you were the best parent you could be, often making mistakes, but still always being their parent. Now you are alone, they (children, friends, family) judge you as a parent. They make a decison about whether you are a good or a bad parent. They want different things from you, they tell you who you can and cannot see, when you can go out, what you should think and feel and what was before 'in family' business now becomes community gossip. You should have been there for me in my grief! they cry. You didn't step up when you should have!

You didn't do what a parent should have done at that time! What was that? I asked. We don't now but you should have done it!

Everyone has an opinion and they all tell you what to think, say and feel.

Close family and friends take sides and all of a sudden, your life isn't about the loss of your loved one but about how badly you have handled it or them.

Your best friends stop talking to you because you don't do what they want.

Your family write you out of their will because you don't do what they want.

Your world as you knew it has fallen apart and so now your grief is not about the loss of your love but more about the loss of your life and you need to start again.

And when you do, they condeem you more for leaving them behind.

What is the greatest tragedy here, the loss of your loved one or the loss of your life as you knew it? And I do wonder, through all of this who asked me or thought how do I feel?

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