Over the last year, I have been a part of many different widows groups, some created out of missing our spouses, some more focused on moving forward in dating and some are a combination. However, something they all seemed to have in common is talking about our late spouses and how much we loved and missed them. For a long time I felt alone, saddened even, that I didn’t really miss my husband. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my husband, I do not regret marrying him, but if I said that I missed him more times than didn’t miss him… I would be lying. If given the chance to have him back, I wouldn’t, because the change in me that has occurred is so great & knowing he is pain free in Heaven gives me peace of mind. For a long time I felt horrible in thinking this and wouldn’t say it out loud until a few other widows who had rough marriages as well spoke out.
It is because of this that often times I feel like a fish out of water. Seeing posts of friends and their late spouses, talking about how great their love was, how they missed them and some of them even saying they could never love again, while I’m over here thinking “I just want to find someone to love me well”… it feels awkward. Sometimes it’s like being back in high school and seeing all the cool kids have so much in common and being on the outside focusing on my activities, but wishing I was in their group. It’s not that what I am doing is wrong, and what they’re doing isn’t wrong either, it’s just different.
So here is the conclusion I came to… It’s okay to not miss your late spouse every day; it doesn’t mean you aren’t honoring their memory either. It just means that your journey is different from others. That’s something I have to remind myself, “my journey is no one else’s but my own”. I don’t expect anyone else to fully understand what I’m going through, nor should I try to understand someone else’s journey completely. This is not possible. We may be able to get an idea, and some more than others, but each journey is its own. So I’m going to live out my journey, I’m going to go about my life loving God & the people around me, and when the time comes for me to love another man, I will love him fiercely and that will be more than okay, that will be amazing! And it will still be honoring my late husband, because he wanted me to be happy and content.
-A