My Grief Journal

My personal experience (inspired by Understanding Your Grief, by Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt Ph.D)

  • Introduction

A favorite photo of Shelley – December 2017, in the midst of the perfect storm in our marriage. November 2022 I lost my wife physically. But I lost her emotionally 6 years prior. This is what it took to awaken me spiritually. I now stand at the doorway of the unknown, feeling alone. I surrender to the mystery. I trust the Love that embraces us all. I most want to explore the feelings of loss and my tendency to want to fill that void. My hope is to have an intimate, romantic relationship again. The struggle is to find contentment in myself before starting such a relationship. 

  • I Open to the Presence of my Loss

Forgiveness – many times I have forgiven Shelley, and myself, for not being who I wanted her to be. 
Gratitude – I thank her for the painful yet beneficial way of transformation. It has softened me more than the pleasures of life. The difficult feelings are not bad. They probably do me more benefit than the pleasant feelings. They are my friends – Love itself. 

  • I Dispel Multiple Misconceptions about Grief

It has helped me to take a conscious pause from the narrative of life, to set aside the drama, arguments, and blaming of ego and consider the perspective of truth (the attunements). 

God is all things. Every gift that comes and every gift that is taken away and the timing is always perfect. It’s God. Mourning is an important part of life. Jesus wept… unashamedly. I continue to share my feelings with Shelley, things I am grateful for. In her absence, I sense she is still present.

  • I Embrace the Uniqueness of My Grief

I was addicted to her physically and emotionally. I sought my happiness and identity in her. These were unreasonable expectations that could not be fulfilled. The last few years we were distanced by a forced withdrawal. I could not leave her. She would have to leave me, and so it was. I could not get enough of her. She felt smothered and wanted freedom. I enjoyed her presence and attention and didn’t like sharing her with others. These were very difficult times. I felt insecure when she disapproved of me or I thought I was an embarrassment to her. She had a strong personality, determined, achieving, spiritual minded, loving/caring, perfectionist tendencies.

A few salient characteristics and memories:

  • patience/sacrifice – she never liked tongue kissing or intercourse, but she willingly did it for me for 36 years, in submission to her husband.
  • Our honeymoon in Guatemala and Yosemite
  • We took dance lessons together
  • Health food diet we shared
  • Spiritual leader, her standing up to the pastor regarding the gays
  • Holding hands for the last time on Catalina Island
  • Newport pier, early morning surfing
  • She worked hard at nursing to help support our family
  • Bedroom door we would close before going to bed
  • Irvine spa, her discontent with her body

For 5+ years she had menstrual like pains and bleeding. She retired and babysat the grand children. In the last two years her health was feeble. Her final year was after the diagnosis of uterine cancer which included seven months of home hospice. I and my daughter cared for her in her final months. The whole family was with her at her final breaths.

She was always the trail-blazer in our relationship. She discerned when it was time to leave a church or Christianity, and how to communicate that to our friends. We went from legalism to an acceptance of all people, from believing in a judgemental God to a loving One, from being competitive winners versus losers to God expressing through every one of us. She is now absent physically, but still present in spirit. What if, she is pure love, without the problematic personality. Full acceptance and appreciation. No criticism of right or wrong. The acceptance of our gay children was a great preparation in seeing how cultural beliefs can be so wrong and damaging.

  • I Explore My Feelings of Loss

Right now I am feeling: lonely – inadequate and needy. A victim – powerless. Yet grateful – this is setting me free. I converse often with her, in one-way conversations of course. My continuing on is not so fearful. Less fear, and more love. To know I can do this. I yearn to fill the void of my wife and intimate companion. I daily wrestle with being content with my life situation. I have experienced much anxiety and fearfulness. But possibly more so before she passed away, in our times of separation. 

Explosive emotions that I have, are: anger, in her going to Peru without me. Blame, I blamed her for our separation and distancing. Resentment, I resented that she got all she wanted and I did not. I am learning to set aside the ego narrative, and remind myself, she was doing her very best. It was all God, orchestrated for my healing. Our relationship for the last five years of her life were difficult. So the relief of her passing was quite welcome. Did I feel a sense of relief after her death? Absolutely. I felt relieved for the reprieve of her suffering. With her paralysis, and coma it became clear she wasn’t coming back. I was also relieved of the personality friction we were going through in our relationship for the last six years. Gratitude is the salient feeling I have for Shelley. Grateful she spent her life with me. Grateful for the opportunity to love. She was indeed a great girl. I continue to reap the harvest of benefits from her: the spiritual direction in my life, wisdom regarding diet, health, finances, charities, family, and caring for the less privileged. I am so grateful for the fruit of our lives together.

  • I Understand My Needs of Mourning

Shelley was one to confront fear – she went on a trip to Peru alone. She also went on two Ayahuasca trips that were very difficult. She was a very serious person to learn truth and achieve her goals. This brought her to Christianity and also to leave it to go on even further. 

  • I Recogize I Am not Crazy

Our last years together were the most difficult. When I most wanted that closeness with her it was not to be. She would not have it. Yes, it was a blessing to set me free of my need of her, but it was and is still painful. 

I just had an emotional moment. In my living room La-Z-Boy chair, which used to be her chair, I blubbered for 1/2 an hour. I was reminded that others were missing her also. So I text our children and Shelley’s siblings. I was ‘ghosted’ by one of the siblings. There is still a rift between us. May this loss of Shelley bring healing in this area too. 

Physically I have been feeling much better after her passing. It feels like I was helping her bear her pain while she was here. A family dog, Jack, did just the same. 

Mystical experiences – I planted a special avocado tree, which I have named Shelley. Before her leaving she promised to give evidence of her presence through our baby avocado tree. The tree was 24” tall at her passing. Six months later it is 48” and flourishing. We have twice mixed her ashes in its soil. 

  • I Nurture Myself

My love language is experiencing physical touch and spending quality time. I want a companion, but fear a companion who needs me. My new friend is high maintenance health wise. But she’s done well without me up to this point in her life. She is a friend I can hug and hold hands with. I have actually felt a little ashamed that I can’t be more autonomous, more content in my self. In five months I have had two lady friends. No way could I wait 24 months without such. I lost one friend – Debbie. She did not want to be Shelley‘s replacement. A wise woman in my opinion. Sue was my grief buddy. We were both going through the grief of loss and ironically it had been a six year journey for both of us, I losing my wife and lover, and Sue, losing her hands and health to rheumatoid arthritis. The feeling of loneliness is my biggest struggle. My huge comforts are my daughter, my grief support group, and my grief buddy. I find great spiritual, nurture in mantras of truth, a visit to my backyard and the park and the many friends I have there. Shelley‘s La-Z-Boy chair is now my chair of contemplation. Often I pause from the narrative of my life to remember a few eternal truths that I have formed into a mantra.

I am Word. I know who and what I am in truth, I am free. 
I am in the Upper Room, I have come. 
I make all things new, it will be so, God Is.

  • I Reach Out for Help

It’s been wonderful to hear the stories of those who understand our loss and to be heard for my loss. My relationship with Shelley at the time of her passing feels it could have been better, but in reality it was as it should have been, friends. The danger now is that my grief can be complicated by trying too quickly to replace that lost relationship with another. Just be friends. 

  • I Seek Reconciliation, Not Resolution

I am very much feeling the loss of my old happiness and identity, in the middle of the wilderness. I am yet to experience being reassembled as the new Pat with a new purpose and joy, but I can envision it. Like Kintsukuroi, in “Sea of memories.” The Universe (Love) is very patient. This process, like life, takes much longer than I anticipated. I feel like Jonah in the belly of the fish. Uncomfortable, a longer journey than expected, but being spit up on the new shore is guaranteed, just not as I expected.

  • I Appreciate My Transformation

I suspect all this pain and transformation is leading me to the experience of our true self. I hope I am becoming more patient with others, more accepting of their prickliness and less resistant to it. Yet I have a long way to go to behave like Jesus Christ. I see God in everything, and more loving than expected.