Host of the At a Loss podcast Timothy Giles, reflects on living with loss.
Weddings are usually very public. Marriage, deeply intimate. Perhaps it is this very personal character that means enduring marriages rarely attract attention. But they deserve it.
One of the great joys in my work as a funeral celebrant is discovering so many lasting, loving marriages. Decades spent together until, as the famous vows promise, death does indeed part them.
Ideally there have been decades. Not always. In my experience there have sometimes been a handful of years married; on one occasion, just months.
“The grief,” she told me, “doesn’t get smaller. There is still a huge hole. I just don’t fall into it as often anymore.”
When meeting, greeting and being with the newly bereaved, lots of emotions are present. Shock, sadness, confusion, regret, anger, gratitude, and love. These are the most common and they tend to tumble around. Arriving and departing unexpectedly, without order or warning.
At least at first. One of my first At a Loss episodes was a conversation with a woman recently widowed and left with three kids – all aged five and under – after her loved husband had suffered a brief, terminal cancer. “The grief,” she told me, “doesn’t get smaller. There is still a huge hole. I just don’t fall into it as often anymore.”
She described how she had located the hole as if it were a quarried pit that now she had managed to fence off a little. So, when she forgot where it was, she would bump against her barriers and stop herself falling, again, into the depths of her grief.
Listening to, or just being with someone who has lost a loved spouse, is a gift. Closeness to connection and commitment, to love, intentionally given. You may not know what to say. Like the times someone has looked up, eyes wide or wet, and said to me, in wonder or shock: “I’m a widow(er).”
These are moments just to be. The last of the emotions listed above are gratitude and love. These arrive. Eventually. Being with the bereaved until they do, that is the task.
To marry, till death do you part. What a love story.
Words — Timothy Giles
Spotify Podcast — At a Loss
