After speaking to hundreds of widows over the years, it seems there’s a little known phenomenon that surprises a great many of us shortly after losing our loved one.
In the beginning of widowhood, the people come.
In droves.
Bearing food and gifts, and support and love.
They come to the house, the visitations, the funerals. They share their condolences. Many cry openly with us. They make promises of support and help. They’re there for us.
And we believe them.
Except, something strange happens. Somewhere in the weeks and months that follow, the people disappear.
There are no more casseroles. No more gift cards. No more invitations. No more phone calls.
At some point we realize that they all went back to living their own lives.
If we thought nothing could get worse up until that naive, gullible moment, we’re certainly set straight with the finality of losing all of the people that came with our person.
We wake up and know, beyond any doubt or hope, that we are alone.
With few exceptions – and those are never the people we think they’re going to be – we are abandoned. Friends we thought were our friends. Family we thought were our family. All melt back into their day-to-day lives while we wallow in a dark pit of despair, alone, lonely, lost.
They don’t realize how long our grief lasts. They don’t know that it’s become a part of us.
It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get better. It doesn’t heal.
It becomes a part of us. And if we’re lucky and determined and strong, we figure out a way to live with it. But it’s still, always there.
We reach out, for support, help, a living body to sit across from us while we share a meal.
But they’re busy. They have lives.
And still you hear, ‘Call me if you need anything.’
Eventually we learn to stop calling.
It’s not something we can prevent. It’s not something we can anticipate. Often the people we think will be there for us are long gone, but sometimes there’s that one friend of a friend, who somehow manages to catch and keep our attention. And somehow, they manage to help us heal in ways we never imagined.
Watch for these angels. They are special and have no idea how much they offer.
Losing the people who were a part of our lives ‘before death’ is more common than we want to believe. But it happens. And the thing is, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Dragonfly You 
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