For her husband, though, her death means a daily -- maybe hourly -- reminder that she is no longer there. He is surrounded by physical reminders, not to mention the rhythms of their daily lives. Our grief therefore has a different pattern.
The first deep grief of my life came in my late 20s, when my father died. It was after a series of strokes over the course of 6 months or so, following a period of declining health. Even so, I felt overwhelmed by the pain of his loss. In retrospect, I believe I wasn't fully adult, even though I was married and working full time. I could not imagine a life without my parents, their constant love and support, their kindness, their lively intellectual conversations. The intensity of my grief lessened, and then returned. After a while, I began to recognize the wave-like rhythm. I knew that the pain would subside and then rise up again - "This too shall pass." One of the most helpful things I did was to give myself time. I told myself it would take 5 years to do the majority of the grieving, and as it turns out, I was right.
Mourning my mother was far more complicated because of the suddenness and violence involved. She'd been in excellent health, and the murder/rape was exceptionally brutal. My sister and I had to deal with the criminal justice system -- the police investigation, the indictment and sentencing of the perpetrator, his subsequent parole hearings, etc. -- as well as the newspaper headlines and how shocked everyone around us was at the same time as attempting to negotiate the natural grieving process. Five years wasn't nearly enough to grapple with the emotional pain. But time and lots of therapy, seeking out healing, slowly loosened the knots, let sunshine into wounded places, and brought me to a place where it felt I would have been if my mother had died naturally.
