Acceptance and Strength
Be assured that you will never be the same after the death of your loved one. The death of someone close to you is not something that anyone ‘gets over’. In fact, it’s something that most people don’t want to get over. Getting over something implies forgetting about it and the last thing that you’ll want to do is to forget about your wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister or friend. This in turn does not mean that someone who has recently been bereaved should live by, or in, the past. The aim is to accept that they have gone, draw strength from the past and let go of the pain.
The ideal, perhaps, is to have joyful, invigorating memories of the past with no diminishing of the present. Strength comes from memories of shared experiences. These can be the memories of single, frivolous incidents that made both of you laugh, but perhaps more important are the memories of significant incidents that reinforced the beliefs in the values that you shared in your relationship. Typically, these might include: honesty, integrity, supportiveness, respect, trust and devotion.
These memories will help in two ways. When you feel yourself slipping into pessimism and depression they will remind you of how you loved, and were loved, and will sustain you in what will be exceptionally difficult times.
