When you have children you are not given a manual on how to raise them. You do the best you can. I feel like grieving is the same. There are lots of books about grief and grieving but there is no one way for how you should grieve the loss of a spouse. Everybody’s experience is different. There is no amount of time that is too long or too short. So many things change when a spouse dies. So many that it is hard to even know what you should be doing.
Things that you used to enjoy are no longer enjoyable. Things that you did for your spouse gladly becomes just a chore. I did almost all the cooking for our family. I cooked for Ben. I have never really been someone that likes to cook but I liked to cook for Ben and to make him meals he liked. He was pretty easy to please as long as it didn’t have mushrooms in it! Not only is it hard to cook for 2 people, but it is hard because I don’t have Ben to cook for anymore.
Ben was my driver too. If we went somewhere together he always drove. Now I have to drive everywhere. It isn’t uncommon for me to have tears rolling down my cheeks when I am driving because I miss Ben being in the driver’s seat and me being in the passenger’s seat. I miss the time we had in the car together talking about things.
I still have all the boxes from Ben’s office sitting right where they were put when they were dropped off here. I haven’t gone through any of them except for one that had a bunch of food in it. Most of the boxes and bins are full of tools and computer parts that I have no use for or any idea what they are. I have no idea what is in most of the boxes because I didn’t pack them up. Eventually I will have to go through them. But for the last 2 months it was enough for me to just focus on getting through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
At some point I will go through those boxes from his office. For now we will let them sit there and continue to walk around them. There are so many other things of Ben’s that I need to go through as well. It will get done. It won’t be on any one else’s time schedule and may take me a long time. But when I am ready, I will work on it.
For the Love of Ben 