Five years on.
After nearly 54 years of married life my wife died of ovarian cancer. It was shortly after her 80th birthday and it was all very sudden. The suddenness never seems to go. The intensity of it does get diluted but still things come to mind that bring tears to my eyes mixed with a tinge of sadness. I do realise that although still feeling a numbing sense of loss there are many people who have had nowhere near this length of life with a partner either because of illness or divorce. There is so much to be thankful for.
Although this is not the mainstream of my thought, loss by death and loss by divorce do have similarities I had never noticed. Sometimes I think divorce can be more shattering. My own experience of loss has given me, I hope, the ability to be more empathetic especially those who have not remarried, as well as a deeper understanding of what grief and loss is.
Some look upon times following bereavement as times when one is ‘footloose and fancy free’: free from social constraints. or a time of freedom to form new social relationships of a binding nature. This can be true although there is a danger that when there has been a great deal of sexual harmony in a marriage, and as older versions of the marriage service say ‘the twain shall become one flesh’, new liaisons can be developed that satisfy sexual need, and other factors-social, intellectual, emotional, and personal intimacy which are also based on core beliefs, are not.
Everyone’s bereavement is bound to be different. I have found within myself that there are two factors that are important. First the need the friendships in our own peer group. Bereavement is surrounded by memories we have of someone who had been very intimate with us for a very long time. Compromises of lifestyles are often made during many years of living with another, and the result is that two people often learn how to think together. Although this structure goes on for a considerable time after bereavement, this structure of living is also severely affected by loss and the changes that start to take place in our identity as a result of new situations. We have to ‘nibble away’ at these changes as we go along.
Yes, men do find it difficult to talk about the more intimate details of relationships with their partners, although I believe that men are getting a lot better at doing this. Although I have been’ retired’ now for over 20 years, it does seem to me that men are now getting a lot more open. Perhaps newspaper and magazine columns that deal with questions of sexuality do now see more men voicing their anxieties.
In a voluntary way I’m still very actively involved in pastoral work, and naturally in my late 80s I am amongst many friends both men and women who have lost their partners. It’s all part of what I call ‘the Ministry of the fourth age,’ and it is very important area in which to share thoughts that can help people to adjust to their new single state. It is not however a role confined to those in ministry, far from it. Even casual conversations we have with others can often be therapeutic.
Secondly there are some ways in which we almost become like teenagers going back to a pre-marital stage. For some it is appropriate and helpful to marry. Marriage should only rarely be on the rebound of loss. It may be important to have several friends of the opposite sex in order to share specific interests with, and this is good.
I must admit that I have felt very shy about having women as friends. I think this a reflection of the way in which I was brought up, but I have found some areas of enrichment here and what is more, often there is a sharing of faith as well, but not necessarily so.
There is at the root of all this the need to share oneself and be proactive in society.. We have to learn how to’ love widely’ in the best sense of the word. We can fulfil a very important role in this way and give the word of encouragement to a great number of people who can very easily become depressed in their loneliness. Social media can help a lot, but frequently distances affect our ability to stay close. In many situations however we can as Charles Wesley says in one of his hymns- ‘hand-in-hand go on’ with all kinds of people in life’s pilgrimage. The wider, the better.
Alongside the tremendous adjustment that bereavement brings which frequently takes many years to restore a sense of balance, one finds one’s relationship naturally changes with many people. We also hope and pray that we will continue to be as helpful and friendly as we can with all who are also close to us in our past experiences.
We have so many gifts given that we can share with others, and we must also share things with our children too -according to their individual needs and wishes.
David Monkton.(13th April 2019)
Every person’s experience of grief is different, and the order in which our reactions take place, but it is possible for us all, I believe, to share some aspects of what has happened to us that will be of help to others. It is often a time of great pain that is not easily shared with everyone around us, and only those who have been deeply enveloped in grief’s shadow can listen and really understand.
I started writing some of my thoughts down, nearly 2 years after Pauline my wife died which still seems as near as yesterday. Sorting through old papers,cards, calendars and letters reminds me of so many fine things that we experienced together during almost 54 years that we were married. Thankfully Pauline had recently celebrated her 80th birthday, and there were no signs of serious illness, but two months later there was a minor stroke followed shortly afterwards by another.She was not able to speak, and in the late stages of ovarian cancer.
This all came as a great shock.
‘Viewing things from the other side.’
How different it is to write about bereavement after serving many years of ministry having taken over that time many hundreds of funerals, and now experiencing grief from the deeply personal hurting side!
Many friends who had been under my Ministry as a Methodist presbyter, wrote letters of condolence, expressing the hope that ‘I would receive the kind of support that I had tried to give to others’. I have been thankful for support both inside the church and from people in the community around me, but I also found it helpful to make notes on how I felt They are not in any particular order-simply dated as they have been written up. Many thoughts expressed are still in the process of evolving!
Grief hits us from many different directions.
Remorse sometimes comes like a heavy bombardment-firing at your failures to respond to your loved ones needs, your lack of sensitivity, blindness and indifference to needs that have been frequently mentioned, and promises unfulfilled.Grief can shake your very foundations, lowering your resistance, undermining your confidence, and it seems to last a long time.
Grief can snipe at you, catching you unawares, even in moments of heightened positive and pleasurable activities. In moments when grief hits, we need to lie low, if we can, and be thankful to God for the fact that he understands us, forgives,and helps us to see the frailty of our humanity, and the frailties of our loved ones too.
‘Father-like he tends and spares us,well our feeble frame he knows……’
Lord, in our times of bereavement, show us the way forward a day at a time. (12th of October 2016.)
Friedrich Nietzsche the philosopher was right when he said that a good marriage and friendship are closely related, but when we lose our partner there is the shattering of the marriage bond. CS Lewis compares bereavement to the losing of a limb, and the longer the marriage bond has been there, the harder the sense of loss is. The archaic language of the older marriage service says that ‘the twain shall become as one flesh,’ or others describe marriage as a glue, and death is often a painful tearing apart of people that have been devoted to each other.they have not always got things right over the years but to the best of their ability
In a long marriage,the physical bond, in other words, the sexual bond is as missed as desperately as the friendship is.this frequently leads into a complicated world of changing relationships, often with people whom we have known for a very long time.It is particularly true of our relationships with those of the opposite gender. We are now single people again and there can often be a kind of nervousness present in our conversations where the other person feels there are overtones on our part desiring intimacy with them which is more than just friendship. There can be confusing ‘signals’ which can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding,and a distancing of relationships which were previously quite close. (to be continued.
Some married couples cannot cope with us on our own, and we might feel very strange ourselves being ‘on our own.’ Withdrawal however, from social life in the long run, very quickly creates a situation where ‘we turn in’ on ourselves,which can rapidly lead many to feeling depressed and under the weather all the time, often undermining our state of health.
