My Caringbridge Journal entry this morning

What I read in so many posts by widows/widowers is the loneliness that dominates their lives. Friends who don't call, family that doesn't call and their world shrinks to a very small size of what they once had. This is the norm for us, not the exception. Death rearranges your address book and we truly do walk a path by ourselves not of our choosing. While we had no choice in our journey, the people who once were part of lives choose to exit. The rationalization is often..."we don't know what to say" or other nonsense like that. We do not want to hear the platitudes like... you need to move on, ...or you need to get over it..those only come from those who never suffered a loss on the level we did.

It boils down to their inability to cope with our loss and the plight we find ourselves in and the easy path for them is the one we are not on or intersect with us. Such is the nature of too many people and you find out pretty quickly when the dust settles after your loss. We are made invisible. Which adds to the defeat we all feel when our future was stolen and life direction permanently altered. We are the voices crying in the wilderness with few hearing and even less caring.

I know the people in this forum all care. Its the commonalty of what we share in being a widow or widower and the outside world either does NOT care or too put off by our grief and pain to make us part of their world.

Such is our journey and it shall be overcome. I know I am not alone.