Transparency or Who Am I Now Anyways?

I started this blog so that I could process my thoughts and feeling and I guess, actions, with regard to my grieving of Dave’s death.

I feel that I have left a lot out.

I am having trouble being transparent. I am worried about judgments; I judge myself. There have been a few ah-ha moments that have been less than flattering; there have been some experiences that leave me wondering about myself. I have been burying these things away.

Do we need to confess our sins? Do we need to be transparent? Do we need to bear all?

I am currently reading Neale Donald Walsch’s book, "When Everything Changes, Change Everything" and one of the first things he feels we need to do is be transparent and have someone to share the journey through change with.

I have found great solace from online widows over the months; I have found solace in my friends and family. I have struggled with some people and I haven’t always been honest.

Does it matter?

I have been dissecting my relationship with Dave and my transition into singleness.

I have been having an identity crisis.

I have been having unexpected experiences and making unexpected decisions.

So - here goes - I am seeing other men.

I think that what is really important is not what I have been doing, but why I have been doing it. I long for and greatly desire human touch. I am very kinesthetic and sensual. I want to be loved and stroked and held. This for me is the hardest part about being a widow. I miss Dave’s touch. I miss the heavy breathing and the ecstasy of lovemaking. But I am not falling in love. My heart can’t go anywhere near that.

I am guessing that this is a phase of my grieving. Just like the drinking I did at the beginning. – ah ha – another confession. I have had a tendency to go a bit manic.

I am amazed at how other widows don’t do these things, or they don’t talk about it. There is something about the idea of a widow in our society – are we supposed to be all stoic and saintly? I drank way too much the first month after Dave’s death. I contemplated suicide for the first 6 months after Dave’s death. I sought sexual experiences 5 – 8 months out. I’ve been jumping out of perfectly good airplanes through the 7th month. This is such an unexpected journey. Really, I am a prude – I am a girl guide – I am passive and fear-based. But my behavior has been so out of character since Dave died. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I am not sure who I am becoming.

Another thing that Neale Donald Walsch’s book talks about is reflecting not on your story – but on your soul or your essence or who you really are. I guess I am trying to find that out.

Who am I really – now - deep down on the inside?

What do I want my life to be now?

So, I guess that I need to be transparent so that I can find out who I am and who I am not.

His Family

You often hear about how things go bad with families when someone dies. I never dreamed that that would happen with Dave’s family. After Dave died, so many speculations about my motives were brought to the forefront but never directly addressed. I was condemned for everything from why my son didn’t like Dave in my life, to why I married Dave, to how I handled the parade of visitors in the hospice, to what Dave decided to leave me in his will, to who was invited to our wedding, and so on and so on.

I now have no contact with Dave’s siblings. I find this sad. If anyone had ever asked Dave and I how things would go with the family, neither of us would have guessed that this is what his siblings would do. I was shocked and terribly hurt by the accusations thrown my way. I had no idea that the actions that Dave and I took leading up to his death would cause so much anger and resentment.

So much of it all shows me that they didn’t know me and they didn’t know Dave and I as a couple. And even though they were a close family, they really didn’t know Dave as well as they thought they did. When I stop to think about it, we didn’t have much contact in the 5 years that Dave and I were together. It was all polite and perhaps they never did like me in the first place. Who knows? All I know is that I loved Dave and Dave loved me and at the end I did everything I could to “do right by Dave”. My actions, done in distress as he deteriorated to his death, were mostly Dave’s motives as I asked him about everything. I asked him whom he wanted to see before he died and he gave me a list of people he wanted to see. I asked him what he wanted done with all his stuff and he gave me a list of material distribution. I asked him whom he wanted to send out correspondence on his behalf and he picked his friend B to do this. And so on and so on. After Dave's death, I put together a memorial service that reflected Dave and his life and celebrated who he was. I truly feel that I did "do right by Dave”. I am satisfied with that and I can live with that. I have nothing to be sorry for except the fact that his family is in so much pain and they have had to direct it at me. I guess what I am also sorry for is the fact that I have been put in a place where I feel I need to justify our actions from the final months of Dave’s life.

On the other hand, I am very lucky that I have a close relationship with Dave’s mother. We see each other often, talk on the phone and we have found solace in each other’s grief.

Just the other day, I spoke with one of Dave’s in-laws and she said, “ Everything is back to normal”, meaning that family contact and relations were back to how it used to be. That statement stopped me dead in my tracks. “Back to Normal” – nothing in my life will ever be normal again.

In the end, I am just going to walk away. I have struggled with what to do about the sibling’s anger and hostility towards me, although they have never actually confronted me. (Just like girls on the playground, this has played out through a convoluted web of interactions, hearsay and non-confrontation) I have contemplated “what is the high road here?” and feel that I have operated out of sound principles and love. I am sorry that some have taken it personally but I have nothing to apologize for.

It is easy to walk away from the siblings. Dave and I didn’t have children. They will go on with their lives as normal and I will attempt to start a new one - all by myself, just as if we never met.

How sad.