I didn’t want to change.

I didn’t want to change. I liked my life as it was. A work of architecture of the heart. Carefully built love and relationships, forged together into a thing of beauty. Until the tidal wave came. It really doesn’t matter how beautiful your sand castle is or how long it took you to build it when a giant wave crashes through. All that remains are a few sand blobs and a couple disheveled sea shells that were once carefully placed decorations. And so it is with losing your spouse. I loved being in love with my husband and the wonderful love story we were given. I loved welcoming children into our loving home and feeling like a real family. I loved who I was then. Giddy, secure, filled with hope and optimism, and resting in the knowledge that I was unconditionally loved and cherished by my husband knowing everything in life we could face together as a team.

I didn’t want grief and loss to change me permanently. I didn’t request for my heart to be smashed into a million pieces. I never wanted to look back at the photos of the happiest times in my life and not even recognize myself because I don’t feel like her anymore. I don’t even look like her anymore. She had a sincere smile and a twinkle in her eye and oozed genuine happiness. My photos now often involve a forced a smile a tight jaw and my eyes reflect the pain of loss. Genuine happiness seems to be a thing of the past. Now it is “fake -it-till-you-make-it” happiness. And let’s be frank here, when you are a solo parent of young children, you just don’t have a lot of free time to pursue your own interests or a new life or anything specifically for the purpose of filling your own cup. Much of the time, the solo parent is pouring out again and again but never truly filling back up again. It is wearying. It is lonely.

I go the department store and see the cards oozing romance and the boxes of chocolate, but I know there is no one who loves me like that. Bouquets of roses remind me of the ones he used to bring me regularly. I miss him more than words could express.

There is no sensible way to resolve a loss. It doesn’t go away. You can’t fix it. You can’t travel back in time. So I have no where else to turn to commit this pain to other than to God. I try to tell myself that He has a plan for this that I simply just don’t and won’t understand with my finite mind. I try to cling to the truth that God is doing a healing work to sew the broken pieces of my heart back together again. I count on Him to work together for good all the changes in who I am as a person that inevitably happened when my husband suddenly died. And I try to believe that somewhere in the future of my life is a real happiness that is worth pursuing, even when I sometimes feel like giving up.

How do you cope this time of year?

In Hope & Prayers,

This Widow Mama

About Dorothy Swanson

Dorothy lost her beloved husband Oct 2021 to a very unexpected bacterial pneumonia that quickly became septic shock. Her other half and best friend was born with a serious congenital heart defect. Because of that, she had always feared the possibility of being a widow, but she thought it would be more likely due to his heart, and more likely when her husband was in his 50s after the children were grown. Instead, he graduated to heaven just one week before turning 34. Dorothy was 36 with young sons ages 5 and 16 months who adored their Daddy. In less than 48 hours, the life Dorothy and her beloved husband so carefully built together shattered. They were blessed to share just over 8 wonderful, joyous and fun years of marriage. While her heart is so thankful to God for having had their journey together, she has struggled since his death with feeling hurt and let down by God. She has felt so devastated that their love story was short and ended so abruptly. Join her as she shares her unfolding journey of grasping to faith in Christ as she journeys through love, loss, single parenthood, honoring her husband's legacy and guiding her sons through their grief and life without Daddy.