How many tears have you cried since your husband died? Probably enough to fill an ocean; or so it may seem. In the beginning, however long that may be, it feels as if they are non-stop. The slightest thing can set them off. Tears may flow like an open faucet on his birthday or while watching a tv show you both loved. Your anniversary or “our” song playing on the car radio might unleash a river flowing down your face. It could be something out of nowhere that triggers a tsunami wave of grief opening a floodgate of sobs even years or decades later.
This may sound morbid or alarm those who are not experiencing this kind of grief, but as widows there are times when we don’t even want to be here any longer. It all feels too much to bear. The pain is cutting and deep. We do not want to harm ourselves nor do we obsess over these thoughts. We don’t seriously want our life to end. We just want the pain to go away. We long for the life we had with our husband. Often times we wonder why we’re still here when the one our soul loves is no longer on this earth. Some of us thought we would be one of those couples who die together or at least soon after the other. Turns out we weren’t. Asking “why” to unanswerable questions can set off even more tears.
I have wept countless times when it feels like a heavy stone is pressing against my chest when reality hits that he’s never coming home again. I’ve heard some primal moaning come from deep within as anxiety creeps to the pit of my stomach like a low-lying fog when evening arrives and he’s not at the dinner table or in his recliner next to me. There are times I’ve felt so downcast that it takes every ounce of strength to even get out of bed in the morning. Grief mentor and author, Tom Zuba whose wife and two children died, says sometimes it’s all you can do just to make your eyelids go up and down. Grieving my husband is harder than I ever imagined it could be. His death left an abyss in my very being that cannot be filled. Probably the majority of us feel the same. There were some days when I couldn’t stop the tears, so I let them flow. I even cried so hard a couple of months after he passed that a blood vessel burst in my eye.
I have often prayed to God to give me strength to carry on, to dry my tears, and to help me “live” life again. And He does. His answers come in the form of an unexpected phone call from a supportive friend or a song that makes me feel like dancing in
the kitchen or singing along in the car. At times a butterfly or dragonfly passes in front of me leaving a sweet feeling that my husband is giving a sign that love never dies. God sees our tears. He hears our prayers. He understands our grief. Over time He creates a mosaic of bittersweet memories from the pieces of our broken heart.
I rarely hold back my tears, even if an item in the grocery store triggers them. Whenever that tsunami hits without warning, I sob as the waves wash over. There is a sense of cleansing after a hard cry. Every time we weep a trickle or a river or an ocean another layer of grief peels off. As painful the reason for them is, with each teardrop we heal a little bit more and take another step forward on our journey of grief.
About Carmen Myrtis-Garcia
Carmen Myrtis-Garcia has faced her fears head-on while snorkeling the Great Blue Hole of Belize despite her phobia of the ocean, ziplining above a jungle canopy even though she is afraid of heights, walking barefoot across red-hot coals at a firewalking event, or moving alone to a foreign country. She does not consider herself brave, just curious.
The hardest challenge she faced was the suffering and death of her husband, Michael, to pancreatic cancer. Faith, prayer, and community got them through three stays in the hospital in a Third World country 3000 miles from family. Michael died in 2015 following an emergency trip back to Colorado just 3 years after they began living their long-planned for Dream on a little Caribbean Island.
Carmen is a published fiction and non-fiction writer. She is a contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul and author of Land of Grief; Hope for the Widow’s Journey (devotional; release spring 2025). She is founder of Hope for the Widow’s Journey (private FB group) and Faith-Filled Widows (public FB), and her blog Thoughts-in-Grief. Her mission is to assist over one million widows to live life forward with hope, faith, and healing through her writings, podcasts, workshops, and grief mentoring.
She is the proud mother of two sons and a daughter-in-law and “neena” to two adorable grandchildren. She resides in Colorado and Belize and wanders at times when her gypsy spirit tugs at her.