When Grief Comes in Waves: A Widow’s Advice Is to ‘Find Your People’
Key takeaways:
For Vicki Miesbauer, grief comes in unexpected places.
Memories of her husband and missing him send waves of sadness through her.
She started a support group and says a community of friends makes grief easier to manage.
Every year, when the smell of cinnamon in her local grocery store hits Vicki Miesbauer, the loss of her husband hits her, too.
Vicki’s husband, Steven, died on December 28, 2012, at the age of 60. Every year, the change from fall to Christmas brings out waves of loss, says Vicki, who has spent more than 30 years as a school counselor in Clemson, South Carolina.
“They’d put out those cinnamon brooms, and when you walk in the door, that smell just overwhelms you,” she says. “It was early in the fall the year after he passed away, and I walked in — that scent got to me. It hit me that, ‘Oh gosh, the holidays are coming. How am I going to do this?’ I ran to the car and just sobbed and sobbed.”
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Grief, she says, stays with you. The loss of a spouse can leave a hole that is hard to repair. Once the initial help from friends and family goes away, the sense of loss remains. Dealing with that, through the help of support groups, and one’s faith, can help one to manage the waves of emotion that sometimes come with living with grief, Vicki says.
A widow’s ‘what ifs’
Vicki’s husband had Crohn’s disease and colitis that he was managing well, she says. But it was complications from a staphylococcus aureus infection that took his life.
One day, Steve fainted. Vicki called for an ambulance to take him to a hospital. While at the hospital, he contracted the staph infection that would eventually kill him. Ten years later, Vikki still questions whether she did the right thing.
“I, like with every widow I’ve ever spoken with, have my regrets,” she says. “Mine is probably: If only he hadn’t gone to the hospital, you know? But he fainted at a public place, and naturally everybody said you need to call an ambulance, so I did. Now, it’s the ‘if onlys.’ If only I’d done things differently. That’s going to be with me forever."
The first year after Vicki’s husband’s death was a fog, she says. It was the next year that was the hardest.
“Initially, there’s a lot of support that you get from a lot of people,” she says. “The real reality of it comes in year two. You start to realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not going to change.’ I think it takes a year to adjust to that. It’s hard the second year. I would say I cried more during the second year than the first year.”
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And what you miss is different, she says.
“In that first year, you miss the person,” she says. “You miss their voice and their laughter and the stupid things they did that used to make you mad. But the second year, you miss everything else, because as a widow, you don’t just lose the person, you lose where he would be in your memories.”
For Vicki, that means missing him being there with her when her son got married and missing going on vacations with him — even just missing having someone to do things like go out to dinner with. There will always be a part of her life that doesn’t have him in it, she says.
“It’s the memories that you would have made,” she says. “It’s the grandchildren that they don’t get to meet and when you see them and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, he would have loved this.’”
Finding comfort through community
To help with her grief, Vicki started a Facebook group for widows. There, she finds camaraderie for those also dealing with grief that she describes as coming in waves.
“At first, they are like tidal waves.” she says. “You’re just bowled over with the waves and they come like high tide. They come so hard and so fast they almost knock you off your feet. And then the waves over time, you still have them, but they’re not as hard and they’re not as big, and they’re not as often — and then it kind of ripples a little bit. It never goes away, even when it’s just rippling.”
Sometimes, she needs a boost of support from others, like after she goes grocery shopping.
Her husband used to do all of the grocery shopping, Vicki says.
“He loved London broils, and I was looking at a London broil, and I thought, ‘I don't know how he did this. I don’t know how much I need to get.’ I said to myself, ‘I don't need this,’ and I threw down the meat and sobbed my way to the car,” she says.
Things like the smell of burning charcoal can set off a wave, she says, because it reminds her of her husband’s love of grilling. But those waves also bring anger.
“When I take the trash down a steep driveway every week and I’m pulling that big old thing down the driveway, sometimes I am mad,” she says. “There are some jobs that I get so frustrated about.”
Now, however, the waves are easier to take. She says her support group and church community have helped her the most. Now, when those grief waves come, she has people to lean on.
“It’s a little wave, but it’s still a wave and I know it’s still coming,” she says. “But it’s easier for me to deal with.”
The community she’s built helps her to feel less alone.
“If there’s any advice I would give to somebody, it would be to find your people,” she says. “If you find your people, you can talk about all of the things you’re feeling and you realize you’re not crazy.”
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