Phyllis M Walsh - The Illusion of Mortality: One Womans Journey from Despair and Loneliness into Wonder, Amazement, and Enlightenment

Chapter 1

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight Rossiter Worthington Raymond.

T his book is for anyone who has lost a loved one and is curious about what happens after our physical bodies die. Unfortunately death is part of life and is a natural conclusion to the physical state. It is something that we do not like to talk about. It is the finality of death which we find disturbing and difficult to deal with so we rather not until it touches our own lives. We will each of us at some time loose a loved one. Depending on the relationship to that person impacts directly on the strength of grief we suffer as a result of that loss. Be it a spouse, a relative, a sibling, a child, your neighbour, each has its own type of hit. But some losses are relatively speaking deeper and harder than others. For me, loosing my young husband suddenly was like being hit by a freight train at huge speed. This traumatic life event had ambushed me with a might I was left reeling from for years. Death no matter which way we try to dress it up or use euphonisms, is by far the hardest of human experience to deal with. We all go about our daily routine trying to do the best we can with what we have. Quite a lot of the time taking what and who we have around us for granted. However, like a lot of things in life it is only when we loose something or someone do we start to realise what and who we had so blessed in our lives. Simple things we all take for granted like our hearing, our eyesight, the ability to get up and walk those of us who are lucky enough to do so. Not to have any pain. Who can do what they want, when they want without thinking. But all these abilities which we never pay a moments notice to are all in of themselves blessings in abundance.

Owen had been a finalist in a competition on one of Irelands most popular morning radio program. As a result his sudden death brought with it alot of publicity.

Picture courtesy of the Herald Newspaper.

Talk to anyone who is blind, or deaf or has lost the ability to use a body part. They will soon put all of these into a profound perspective. On the other hand to loose a Soulmate, a child, or a very close friend is quite plainly horrific. There is no other word. Not alone have you lost that special person but you now have to deal with the aftermath of no longer having that loved one in your life. I liken it to switching on a television and the picture is only in black and white. No matter how much you fiddle around with the switches, you can only see the images without colour. I use this analogy because that was how I saw life around me following the death of my husband. Life had lost its glow, its substance. The colour was turned off in and around my existence. I was in robotic mode. Doing perfunctory things. Daily jobs which had to be done. Dragging my feet as I tried to do them and make sense of my situation. I found myself in that pit of despair a lot of people find themselves when in the midst of a bereavement. People rallied around for awhile, but then they started to dissipate and go back into their own lives. And rightly so. But my life had finished. Certainly the life which I knew to be had indeed finished. I never would have thought back then that any semblance of a new life would ever emerge. But this is exactly why I needed to write this book. For those of you who are entering into the journey of grief or know somebody close who is, I want to say to you that life will go on and that you will emerge into a new life with new possibilities. I did it and I am just beginning. So can you. I want to give hope and encouragement to others who were like me. Do not give up. The analogy of the caterpillar turning into the wonderful butterfly. Yes, in a sense the caterpillar 'dies' but a new life emerges. I have found from my own experience and from other people that situations happen in our life for a reason a specific purpose. We may not see it like that at the time, but eventually the reason will unfold. 'What does not break us down, builds us up.' We may be like the walking wounded in the begining, and our emotional scars may not be obvious to all, but we will be stronger in time.

Awakenings

T he first year following my husband's passing was one which was clouded in a dense fog. This was the fog of adjustment, disbelief, denial and finally trying to find my footing again in my new life. I was still a mother, and still felt like a wife. But reality told me I no longer was. We define ourselves by who and what we are. The jobs we have, the things we do in life. However, half of my identity as I knew it to be was no more. You see I was no longer a wife but a widow. I always disliked that word Widow. It has a negative connotation of a kind. It conjures up a depressing picture of a sad lonely woman whose life has somehow ended. And in a sense it has. For me being a young widow, I was beginning to identify with this image. Due to my extreme grief and emotional pain there were times when I wished my life had ended. But I had two young children to raise, a three year old little boy and a nine year old girl. Added to this my little boy has special needs and that fact took on an even different and deeper agenda. Today with the passage of time, he has become one of my best helpers and teachers in who I am. It seemed back then like too much to carry. But then God gives us the burdens he knows we are able to deal with. Sometimes I do question this. Because when you hear of people who for example have lost children though either murder, war and or other dreadful scenarios, it is difficult to apply this notion. Some people may be better than others to shoulder some of life's unfortunate handouts. None of us ask for the negative situations which come into our lives. Most of the time we have no choice. However we must deal with disasters when and where they arise as best as we can. Each of us has our own coping skills and personal strategies to manage life's adversities. But I had no choice either at that time. I was a single parent whether I liked it or not. My husband had died, and yes I was a young widow.

My days back then a lot of the time were without much clarity but I managed to get through them. My husband used to say when he was alive, that if I was going through a bad time, not to take it one day at a time, but to take it one hour at a time. And I would say this to any of you who are going through any particular difficulty. Just take it an hour at a time. Bite size pieces. In the beginning of our marriage after our daughter Sophia was born, we suffered the trauma of loosing three babies through miscarriage. Each loss was as difficult and as hard to come to terms with. And one miscarriage does not in itself prepare you for the loss of the next. Each one is different and unique. It was a big lesson for us both in grief management. I used to say to people that I could give a master class on loss, and now I certainly could. But somehow we both made it through those dark lonely days of loss and adjustment. Unbeknown to me at that time, they were the lessons to pave the way for my biggest hurdle to come. But looking back on those bleak and lonely months, I noticed that some new and wonderful people were beginning to enter my life. People who I would never have met if my husband were still alive today. However, they were blessings in disguise. Some were people who had experienced the same or similar loss as myself. The only difference was that they were further up the road of recovery than I was. They were therefore able to impart glimmers of hope and inspiration to me when my spirit was broken and in pieces. I do believe that the human Spirit can be incredibly strong. We only have to hear stories of the concentration camps and the atrocities the survivors witnessed. Somehow they found the strength against all the odds to move forward and live their lives in society having lost everything. So within my own sadness, I tried to focus on others misfortune and felt that if they could cope and surmount their immense difficulties I certainly could do the same.