Today’s entry in “Healing After Loss” reads:
What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.
Thomas Mann
Yeah. No.
OK, I understand that some grief is complicated. Some people have, had, terrible misfortune in their relationships and marriages, abuse and neglect and other awful things that complicate their losses, and the feelings that remain afterward.
As bitter as I am about having only 17 months to be married to the love of my life, and 3 1/2 years to live with her (overshadowed by cancer and death the whole time), compared to other widowers and widows I’ve met who got to have decades with their spouses, I guess I’m lucky that there is no complication in my grief. My only regret is that I didn’t have more time with her, that I was too afraid to tell her how I felt about her when we were 23, or 15, or 8. I cherish absolutely every single second I had with her. It was perfect. We were perfect.
Thomas Mann can bite me. I would give anything to “call her back,” if she could come back healthy. And I know she’d want to come back. I would give anything, endure anything, to have her back with me, healthy and whole and full of life. It couldn’t be simpler.
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