Musings of a Meandering Mind

  Moving forward.  How do you know if you're ready? After losing a spouse, the thought of life without them is overwhelming. The confidante who helped you navigate the unknown isn’t there. The one whose arms around you provided comfort, is gone. You’re faced with an all-encompassing grief. Logically you know that one day you’ll get to the ‘moving forward’ part of the process. But how do you know if you’ve finished mourning? How long does that take? How do you know if you’re ready? If only there was a litmus test. One must go through the grief process, not around it. Experts say there are five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although for every loss, we experience each stage, they present themselves differently, from intensity to length. For me, I had nine months to ‘prepare’ or maybe ‘brace’ myself before he died. We tried to savor the time we had left, to experience joy, laughter, and happiness. But no matter what we did, we could feel the da