A Smiling Young Widow

A few weeks ago I spent a few days in a row trying to decide if I had caught the flu or if this was just the ongoing stress of grief flaring up and making me nauseous and achey. Pretty sure it was in fact, just the grief. Now I’m back at it again. My entire body is acheing. I’m so nauseous that toast doesn’t even sit well. My heart is racing. I can feel my head on fire. It’s like my body keeps trying to fix this infection that has taken over me, but it can’t. This is unanchored love with nowhere to go, and each cell in my body feels the stress of that. 

There was one night a few months ago where I woke up in the middle of the night, running to the bathroom sick. I couldn’t even move, hugging the toilet as the room spun. Eventually I made it back to bed. Then the next morning I was totally fine again.

From the moment I got the news that Tom was in the hospital, my gut has never been the same. I remember the first time I could feel my heart beat pulsing in my lower abdomen as I sat next to his ICU bed – I’d never felt that before.

The grief manifests in so many ways,  things like the worst heartburn of my life (I’ll spare more GI details!) or constant headaches or losing hair. I was thinking I’d pulled something that was causing this weird pain in my hip like I could never get comfortable – I mentioned it to an osteopath I’ve started seeing, turns out it was a bit of sciatica. Another new delight.

I’ll feel my heart racing or my clenched jaw, as I identify that anxiety is building in me again. Sometimes I run or walk to try to break it. Sometimes I get outside or shake my whole body. Sometimes I can do meditation or yoga. Other times I cry, unable to do anything and just wishing desperately for a big Tom hug as the only thing that could make this all go away. 

It’s no wonder that the widowhood effect is a thing, where older adults who have lost a spouse face an increased risk of dying themselves soon after. Widows even have higher levels of periodontal disease, with higher markers of inflammation noted in their saliva. This physical side of grief has been so crazy to me. Here I am a healthy 34 year-old and still having all these weird things happen to my body.

I had a pretty good knowledge of how trauma and emotion can manifest in the human body, how it can be linked to all kinds of physical things… I wrote part of my masters thesis on how dangerous stress is for people’s physical health. Then I experienced all this myself, and have a whole new understanding. Trying not to worry about that, as the last thing I need is more stress to jump onboard! 

(Side note – don’t anyone read this and worry about me – I’ll be just fine, I now believe that and am doing pretty good at taking care of myself again.)