My beloved husband, Kent, died in January 2012, 3 years after diagnosis of a brain tumour. Our son was 2 1/2 and our daughter 3 months old. He and I were far too young. I am now hurtling through the black space of life without him.

Sunday 13 May 2012

A vinegar week

Perhaps it's a revelation, perhaps it's obvious, but time doesn't heal from day one. Yes there are ups and downs on the graph, we all know that, but actually, you don't start at the bottom on day one and go roughly up from there. There is a numbness at the beginning, they say. And I think I had that numbness. I read that if you felt all the grief in one hit it would kill you. So it is drip fed. Actually, no, sometimes it comes in floods, but it's not all there at the beginning. It does feel as though you are completely packed full of it, but compared to what is to come, it has barely touched the sides.

So the line on the graph of grief goes down for a while. I don't know when it starts to go up. I fear how far it has to go down first. This week it has felt as though the numbness is wearing off. Memories of the thousands of things Kent and I have done together have been flashing through my head all this time, and sometimes the intensity of memory and sweetness of feeling his nearness are extreme. The more I can feel the exactness of what life was like with him before cancer the better, and the worse.

A dear friend recently wrote a kind and beautiful and insightful letter to me in his blog which you can read here, and suggested that instead of healing, time pours vinegar on the wounds of our grief. Indeed, as I drop down the graph, I am feeling the vinegar this week.

3 comments:

  1. Holding your hand on the way down, and then up.

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  2. Vinegar is also a preservative. It tastes awful by itself, but it sees a bigger picture. Always, love from Uz.

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  3. I read that Jack was right - vinegar and brown paper are useful for bruising. But how it stings on an open wound!

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