Surprise, Surprise

One of the hardest things about working through the suicide of a spouse is how many things don't seem to play out the way that we'd usually expect them to do. Sure, there's plenty of things in life that seem like they don't go the way they should. A movie doesn't turn out to be as good as the previews would've suggested. A recommended restaurant turns out to be not such a great place to eat after all. The date that the friend who set us up raved so much about is someone that...well...we're happy to wish a good life. Somewhere else. Heh....the prize in the box of cereal was nothing but a disappointment.

In general, though, life goes about the way we figure it's going to. We can tell when the car's running low on gas. We know that getting taxes ready is going to be a headache. The grocery store usually has everything we're going to buy. Going to a favorite place usually turns out to be something that we can and do enjoy. Looking at a box of pictures brings up the memories we figure they're going to bring up. Life usually goes the way we figure. The times when it doesn't are times that are much more the exception than the rule. It's one of the reasons why they stand out so much. When things go strange, we're not real sure how to handle them, which is why it's such a shock.

And then there's dealing with this kind of grief. All of a sudden, there are a LOT of things that aren't going the way we're used to or would expect. Driving down a street that we'd been on literally hundreds of times before brings up an unexpected pain so sharp it's suddenly almost impossible to breathe. Opening a drawer in the kitchen looking for a slotted spoon to serve up the food we cooked brings into sight the stainless steel measuring cups we didn't figure that we needed....and it turned out we're glad they anted to buy. All of a sudden, we're crying and missing the things they knew and did well. Looking at a box of pictures of a favorite vacation brings up all kinds of things. Maybe it brings up the good memories along with enough pain to drop us to our knees. Or maybe it's fear of not having anything good like that again. Perhaps it's fear that we might have some good times again...and lose them just as badly. It could be an aching emptiness and sadness over what had been in our lives before and no longer is. Maybe it's rage at the spouse who abandoned us in such a catastrophic, disastrous way.

No wonder exhaustion and lack of energy tend to follow us around. Think about how draining it is when the usual, unexpected stuff happens in life. Even if it's good stuff, it still takes more energy to deal with than the usual, run-of-the-mill events. When the excitement and the high wear off, we crash. When it's things that have gone badly, the effect tends to be even stronger. When it happens more often, then it's a consistent draining effect. They keep coming for quite a while, too. Sometimes they only hit once. Sometimes, the same thing can hit couple of times when we don't expect it or when we'd thought we'd already worked things through. Sadly, the impulse to avoid them just prolongs the misery.

The only thing there really is to do is to ride the ride until it's done. As Winston Churchill once said, “When you're going through Hell...

“...keep going.”