Wouter Looten - The Widowers Manual: Unrevealed Cornerstones to Regenerate Your Life

the widowers MANUAL

Unrevealed Cornerstones
to Regenerate Your Life

WOUTER LOOTEN

the widowers MANUAL

Unrevealed Cornerstones to Regenerate Your Life

2012 Wouter Looten. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from author or publisher (except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages and/or show brief video clips in a review).

Disclaimer: The Publisher and the Author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the Publisher nor the Author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the Author or the Publisher endorses the information the organization or website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that internet websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

ISBN: 978-1-61448-180-5 paperback
ISBN: 978-1-61448-181-2 eBook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011944160

Morgan James Publishing
The Entrepreneurial Publisher
5 Penn Plaza, 23rd Floor
New York City, New York 10001
(212) 655-5470 office (516) 908-4496 fax
www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

Cover Design by:
Rachel Lopez
www.r2cdesign.com

Interior Design by:
Bonnie Bushman

In an effort to support local communities, raise awareness and funds, Morgan James Publishing donates a percentage of all book sales for the life of each book to Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg.

Get involved today, visit
www.MorganJamesBuilds.com .

To absent friends

I wake up. I had an awful dream.

Im all sweaty. My heart is pounding in my chest.

Im still scared and my head hurts.

I open my eyes and I look up at an unusual ceiling.

I recognize it though.

Im in my parents guest room.

Then it hits me.

It wasnt a dream.

I stare at the unused pillow beside me.

The confirmation is devastating.

Shes not there.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE rest of my life started on June 5th 1997. It was a Thursday. The day my world began as a blank page again. Unwritten. I didnt have a pen and I didnt have any ideas for a story line. I still didnt understand what had happened the day before. I was still wondering if it were true.

If people back then had showed me a future image of myself more than a decade later, feeling energetic, enthusiastic and truly enjoying life, I would not have believed them. My future had stopped yesterday. The day they told me my wife had been killed.

I wonder if you remember the last time when you were in a situation where you thought you could conquer the world? Can you look back at moments in time where you were so high on adrenaline that you felt you were invincible? In those moments everything just fell into place, and you thought, This is what life is all about! I am on the top of the world. Wouldnt you wish all your days were filled with occasions, which give you feelings of immense power? Dont you agree in such moments you could easily handle whatever challenge to come across your path? Yet sometimes you run into confrontations, which are simply too colossal to manage. Sometimes you find yourself facing a challenge, which makes you want to give up as well. This time you feel like you have been defeated. It makes you want to throw in the towel.

Your wife died.

These words could sound pretty blank for all the non-widowers out there. However, if you have received the ticket to join our club, youll find yourself within the most chaotic and surreal situation imaginable. To remember the time when you were conquering the world is not on the top of your mind anymore. The feeling that you are indestructible is not present.

Energy, vitality and joy changed into apathy and desolation. You are lost. There are no more words and thoughts. In your despair you look around like a kid with big wondering eyes, not understanding what the adults are doing, hoping that someone will tell you this is nothing but a bad dream. There is no more sense in the world. All logic and reason have disappeared from your life. You have the feeling of being in a cocoon. You are not able to think, to hear or to see clearly. Youre alone in space where no one and nothing can reach you. You want life to be as it was before, but it just isnt. Its simply not possible. That world, that life, isnt there anymore. You understand that life goes on because you are still here and you see other people doing their everyday stuff, but you are basically functioning as a zombie. Without any effort you feed yourself instinctively. You couldnt care less for your job. You dont even care for life itself. However, it is absurd to find yourself in such a state. This is not you. This is not what you were set out to do. You had dreams, ideas and plans. You had projects that meant something to you, which were important to you. Yet, all at once they have totally lost their value.

Perhaps you didnt think of it constantly, but your wife was always part of your imagined future. And now shes gone? How is that even possible? What does this mean for you? What does this mean for your dreams? What does it signify for your future?

Youre at a roads end, at least, thats what you think. Thats how you feel. But is it really? Is this also your end of the line or could there be more? Would there be a possibility for a new beginning? Very unlikely you would say.

After public speaking, to die is the biggest fear we have in life. We dont like to think or talk about death. We are not taught how to deal with it. The lack of knowledge makes us scared of death and therefore we neglect the subject. This works remarkably well for as long as we actually dont have to deal with it. Then again, we are not completely ignorant. Although we dont know what it is exactly, we do know that it is the end of our lives. But then what? Is there still something beyond death? Some of us believe in a heaven or in an afterlife, others dont. In any case, we dont have hard evidence, which would establish the fact of any form of continuation after we die. So we simply say, If you dont have proof, it doesnt exist, end of discussion. Now, we can skip to speak in public, yet everybody is going to face death sooner or later. When we must, we are not prepared to deal with it. It blows us away, especially when it happens to someone very close to us. Especially when it happens sooner.