Is There a Time Limit on Grieving?

There definately is social pressure to hurry up and get over grieving and back into a normal life. Relatives and friends hate seeing you in pain and suffering and they want you to "get over it" and "move on". They want to see you happy again. A few close friends will understand the enormity of your loss and will stand by you while you take all the time you need to grieve.

Grieving is a process of dealing with a great loss and learning to live without who or what you lost. It's a process, a step by step path from loss to living again. In this way, each person feels grieving differently and has their own process and path to create to move forward.

For me, grieving is a big hole that I fell into unexpectedly. In an instant, my life collapsed. I died with her.

Grieving for Kuma was grieving for the loss of our relationship, grieving for the bond that was broken, the love that was lost, for the special being that she was. I grieve for the loss of the special relationship that I had with her that can never ever again be. I grieve for her, to be a part of her, her life, her trust, her happiness. I miss being in awe of what an amazing being she was, her love, her gentleness and kindness. I am in awe of her strong life force and her will to get back up on her feet and live, her enjoyment of life, her inquisitiveness, her sensitivity and caring for me. I grieve for her absolute love, loyalty and trust. I miss feeling her warmth, hearing her breathing, seeing her eyes and watching her walk. I miss her being.

Going to bed without hearing her breath beside me creates a deafening sound of nothingness. Not feeling her warmth makes everything feel cold. I heard and felt her life for most of 17 years. The transition to emptiness without her is the daily struggle I feel in trying to live without Kuma.

Seven months later, this grieving is not letting up. It feels like she was here yesterday. It feels like no time has passed. I still feel her in my memory.

So how long will this go on for?

Let me say this. Just 3 days after Kuma was dead, I tried to pick myself up. I made a 'to do' list of what I needed to do to get back to life. Obviously that didn't work. Instead, I fell into a deeper greiving.

I felt that I needed to understand all the circumstances that lead to her death. I needed to understand what I was feeling and how much I missed her. I needed to hurt in order to heal. I needed to face my grieving full on and not try to run away or ignore it. The bigger my relationship was with Kuma, the deeper and harder was my grieving. I have had relatives die that I have not grieved or hurt for as much.

It has been in my personality to feel things and not ignore them. So, I sat and grieved. I greived so hard that it scared me. I backed out a bit when I became afraid that I would go into seizures like Kuma did. I backed out a bit when I felt that I wanted to die to go and see if I could find her in another dimension. I kept going in deeper and backing out a bit.

I forced myself to go out and socialize a few times. It definately helped. I went to visit a powerlifting friend, I went to referree a powerlifting meet and spend time with close friends and I went to visit with my family. Each of these efforts helped alot. Every time I came back, I got hit hard with the reality that my grieving is not over and will be here with me forever. I just have to learn how to live functionally with it.

There is no end to my grieving. There is only my effort to normalize my life without Kuma. I will always keep searching for Kuma. I will talk less about my pain of losing her to others because it is not socially acceptable to others to see me in pain. I don't want my mother or anyone else to see my pain.

How long will this go on for? I think forever. I will learn to live with it. Grieving makes Kuma's life real to me. I never want to forget her and as long as I remember her, it will hurt to be without her.