calliemm

Things I wish I knew in the Early Days of Grief
(For the newly widowed)

There are versions of early grief no one can prepare you for. I didn’t know about the kind where you’re not only mourning your person, you are also trying to keep your kids afloat, hold onto your home, your sanity, and pieces of the future you thought you’d all share.
When I lost my husband, Bren, I searched for anything to help calm the chaos in my brain. Not a fix, nothing fixes grief, but to make sense of what was happening and to feel less lonely, and less alone.

This is what I would tell the woman I was back then, and anyone walking a similar path now.

1. Nothing will make sense and that’s ok.
   You’ll swing between disbelief and clear thinking, numbness and pain, and then back again before lunch. You’ll feel like you’re functioning one hour and falling apart the next. This is normal. Grief is not linear or logical.
   It’s messy. It’s physical. It’s exhausting. And no, you’re not doing it wrong.
2. If you have kids, they will grieve differently to you. Let them.
   This is one of the hardest parts: grieving as a mother while grieving as a wife is soul destroying, because you carry your children’s grief beside your own.
   My kids were thirteen when they lost their dad, they didn’t shut down or get angry. They were devastated, but able to function. Kids are resilient. I watched them closely, and so did our family. I made sure they were eating, sleeping and laughing. None of that meant they weren’t grieving, just that their brains and hearts were doing the best they could.

I remember telling them two things, back in the first week they lost their dad, to help them (I hoped) cope with Bren’s death.
The first happened when Bades laughed at something on his phone, and then caught himself. The look on his face was pure devastation at the thought he could still laugh. I looked at him, smiled and said, “darlin, if you see something funny, you laugh. Dad wouldn’t want it any other way.”
The second was a little more metaphysical, but I’m a metaphysical girl, so they’re used to that.

I explained to them that I think we all sign a Spiritual Contract before we are born. This contract takes into consideration who our parents, children and siblings will be. Where in the world we will live, and the experiences we will have, both good and bad, for our soul growth.
I told them when it was their dads turn to write his contract, he was shown the family groups he could have, wives, children and pets. And he decided to choose Us and Oti, (and our choices matched his.) Not unlike how tinder works, but without the swiping.
Bren could have chosen another family and stayed longer on earth, but he didn’t want anyone else. He chose our family (and so did we) he chose a shorter time with us over a long time with others. He wanted Tyz and Bades to be his kids, me as his wife and Oti to be our dog. He wanted our family.

Having said that, I think what helped them accept their loss the most was my presence, and that of my family and friends. Our consistency in being there for them, and our willingness to keep showing up. There were days that I couldn’t hold it together, and there will be days that you cant. That’s okay. Show them that grief is survivable, not something to be hidden.

3. You will feel guilty about everything. Let that guilt go.
   I felt guilty that I couldn’t save Bren. Guilty for being exhausted.
   Guilty for not grieving ‘right.’ Guilty for not ‘getting over it’. Guilty for feeling numb. Guilty for not being enough for your kids. Guilty for thinking about the future.
   Here’s what I wish I had realised sooner: My guilt was really just grief in another form. It wasn’t the truth, and deep down, I knew that. But a part of me wanted to punish myself for being the one that was still here. So I’m telling you from experience, you are allowed to eat, sleep, rest, read, laugh, exercise and dream again.
4. Your sense of security will all but disappear. Slowly, it will return in new ways.
   Losing Bren was losing more than my person. I lost the future we planned together, the certainty, the shared load, and the feeling of security. I remember it felt like the ground dropped out from under me. No one warned me about the fear that would follow, the financial, physical, spiritual, and emotional instability I would feel. Or how the sheer lack of motivation, but the need to handle everyday life, could feel just as suffocating as the heartbreak. I want you to know: You will rebuild, piece by piece, choice by choice. You will become capable in ways you never wanted to be or imagined you could be, and one day you will be proud of that.
5. You don’t have to be strong all the time.
   People will tell you you’re so strong, and you will want to scream because you don’t feel strong. You just have to do what you have to do. There’s no choice but to keep going. So give yourself permission to fall apart, cry, swear, scream, and ask for help.
   Say ‘I can’t do this today,’ whenever you need to. Strength isn’t in not breaking, but how you put yourself back together.
6. Teaching my kids how to grieve.
   It took me a while to realise that the love I had for Bren, and talking about it and him, every chance I got, was teaching Tyz and Bades that love doesn’t disappear when someone dies. And that loving their dad after he’s gone doesn’t stop us from growing forward. I made sure they knew that they didn’t have to move on. We would move forward when we were ready and their dad would move forward with us. Just in a different way. In the memories and the love we shared.
   When it comes to loss, you don’t have to replace what was lost. You just have to keep loving your kids and honouring the love that built your family. That was the best I could do in early grief, and that was enough.
7. Things I did that helped me Survive the First Year (and beyond)
   I kept routines simple. Routine and consistency gave the kids (and me) something to hold onto and somewhere to be.
   I said yes when family & friends offered help. I also said No, when I didn’t want to do something I didn’t feel ready for.
   We talked about Bren often. I told stories, and we looked through lots of photos. Doing this felt like we were keeping our connection to him alive, which was really important to us, especially in the early days of grief.
   Expect brain fog. Write things down. Be patient with yourself, and be careful when driving. I have only ever ran a red light twice (accidentally). Once in early grief after losing Bren and once after losing my mum. Please be careful.
   Find one person you can be completely honest with. A friend, counsellor, or sibling. You need a safe person. Someone who wont freakout when you share some of your darkest thoughts.
   Take photos. I’ve always been the memory keeper and photo taker in our family. I didn’t want there to be a gap in our photo memories, for any period of time. There probably aren’t as many photos of our first year without Bren. But there are some. Especially times like Christmas and birthdays (which was hard because Christmas, and the kids birthdays came pretty soon after Brens death.) Taking photos at the time maintained a sense of normalcy. And was something I never thought I’d have to think about.
8. You won’t feel this broken forever, even if you don’t believe me right now.
   In early grief, time becomes a strange thing. Days stretch. Months blur. And people will say, ‘It gets better,’ which you’ll want to roll your eyes at, because it doesn’t really, it gets different. But here is what I wish someone had said instead:
   You will grow around the grief and eventually life will become bigger than the pain, (most days.) And one day you will realise that you are carrying their love with you in a way that feels lighter. It won’t be day 1 and might not be day 600. It won’t happen quickly. But I found in time my grief started to feel lighter, gently and gradually. I don’t feel the love any less, but the grief is breathing with me now, and sits just behind my heart keeping its own rhythm, reminding me that Bren was here, and still is.

A note from where I stand now
It has been years since those early days of grief for us. Tyz and Bades are adults now, stronger and more compassionate than I imagined anyone could be. And I’ve grown too. Not past grief, but with it. Around it. Through it. I won’t pretend any of it was easy.
There were days I thought the pain might crush us, when I didn’t know how to be both mum and widow. There were days when the weight of being the only parent felt impossible. But we kept going. We are a team, and Bren would be very proud of us. Looking back, I can see something I couldn’t see at the time:
We survived because we chose to, one day at a time, not by leaving the past behind, by making sure it was always an important part of who we are now, just like it would have been if Bren was still here. Never forgotten, always remembered.

If you’re in the beginning of this journey, if the world feels dark and unfair and unbearable, please believe me when I say:
You are not alone.
You are not failing.
You are not breaking beyond repair.
You and your children will grow around this loss.
You will find new moments of joy, even if that feels impossible now.
You will rebuild a life that feels steady, secure and meaningful again. Not because the grief disappears, but because love, stubborn, fierce, ongoing love will carry you forward.
I’m proof of that, and so are my kids.

“Grief doesn’t ask us to forget, it asks us to carry love differently.”
Hold that close when the days feel heavy. You’re doing better than you think, and you’re not walking this path alone.

The featured image is of Tyz and Bades, walking through the streets of Rome on the day we arrived. It was 5 years to the week that we lost Bren, and the day I believe real healing began for all of us. Travel is like medicine. It took us out of the usual and showed us the world. We experienced real happiness again and didn’t love Bren any less or miss him more, for that experience. We enjoyed being alive. Which is what he would expect of us.