Posted by Neal on March 15, 2001 at 20:13:33:
I'm not sure all this will print so I will get to the point. I am twice widowed from what I considered very good marriages, one was 36 and one was 56. I have worked a few years in the cemetery sales business and sold headstones so I have been around grieving persons. I am full of empathy.
I have plenty of suggestions about being posiitve minded. Maybe you can spot some of them on my web site or my many hours audio program at 206-440-8735. Basically it is if you need to feel sorry for someone, let it be the one that is gone, not yourself, after all, you are still here.
I felt I had made a few mistakes but then got rid of the guilt and thought about the really great lise we had for 15 years, and the wonderful children I still had.
I remarried thinking, "with my esperience I will REALLY make the most of this marriage. I began to notice that sometimes I had a deeper understanding of the reasons not to have any conflict, after all, I had another chance. Things went well, but after 20 years, she died of cancer at 56. Strangley enough I was told I had cancer on the day of her first chemotherapy, but now, many years later, I don't seem to have it and only changed my diet, no surgery.
Here is the lesson I inferred in the headliner----when you meet other people with all their problems, they are often worse. Why do I say "worse" when they lost one and I lost two? Because I was twice blessed. For others, if they are in grief, what IS grief? It is often all the greater because they were more blessed than perhaps the "average" marriage. God somehow has seen me be part of two happy marriages. Some persons do not have ONE happy marriage. I regret they are gone but not as "poor me", I feel they missed a good part of normal life expectancy. It is for them I sorrow and I feel all the more responsibity to have finished raising the children with every possible care.