As I finished my first post, I was already thinking about the new one.
Hope for Widows has given me much food for thought. I know that there are countless experts who have written on grief: the stages, how to cope, being resilient, advice on how to laugh again, how to find joy again, the emotional processes involved in grief, the list goes on and on. However, my grief is not like yours. My love was not like yours. The age was different, the time together was different, the fatal end was different.
Was there an accident? Did it happen out of the blue? Was there an illness? How long did the illness go on for? Did they take their own lives? Did you know it was inevitable? Are there children involved? How old are they? How are they coping? Do you have to keep them all together? Were they a first spouse or are you coping with other children or family members, too?
I guess where I’m going with this is that there are as many “griefs” as there are people. I hate applying labels to situations and emotions. You cannot label grief. At times you cannot even pinpoint it.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about my feelings. I can now say, in hindsight, that my grief started on March 4th, 2021.
I was at my daughter’s house babysitting. She had just gone back to work after maternity leave. She’s an English teacher, too. She works with primary school kids, I work with adults, so the arrangement worked perfectly for us. She went to work in the mornings, I babysat little Africa. Then, I would drive back from Lucena to Antequera, have lunch with my hubby, and go to work.
Except that day, he called me and told me he had fallen and that he couldn’t get up. I drove like a madwoman from Lucena to Antequera to see what had happened to the love of my life.
I thought he might have broken something. But no. He was sitting on the couch; he couldn’t really remember much. My daughter had called the ambulance, I arrived before they did. When they did get there, they did all the COVID procedures, and we went to the hospital. That’s when he was diagnosed, he had a 10cm cancerous tumor in his left lung.
You know, I don’t know if this happens to the rest of you. I find it hard to remember the fun happy times, but this, all of this, I remember with such clarity!
About Carmen Medina
Carmen is a 65-year-old widow who is living in Spain. She was born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada to Spanish parents. Since 2019 she has been living in Antequera in the south of Spain. She was married to Barrie Eggington, her soul mate and love of her life till he passed away on December 23rd, 2023, after a long battle with lung cancer.
Thanks to Hope for Widows, which she found online just a few weeks after his passing, Carmen found a group who not only understood what she was going through when few others did, but also solace in her sisters in grief, a place where she could express her feelings and find the resonance she needed.
Carmen has been an English teacher and teacher trainer for over 30 years in Europe, the Middle East and North America. She still teaches English and is the principal at the government funded language school where she is currently working. She spends her time with her daughter and grandchildren. She goes to the gym every day, loves the beach, particularly Torremolinos where she reminisces about the time she spent there with her late husband.