It’s not getting easier: when the casseroles stop and the loneliness settles in

She told me she walked into the grocery store for three things and came out forty minutes later with none of them. She’d stood in the cereal aisle crying over a jingle from a commercial her husband used to hum. At his memorial service, weeks earlier, she’d felt almost nothing. Now this. She asked me what was wrong with her.

Nothing is wrong with her. And if this sounds familiar, nothing is wrong with you either.

So many widows tell me the same thing. The first weeks were a blur, but at least people were around. Now the cards have stopped. The casseroles have stopped. Everyone has gone back to their lives. And when your grief is not getting easier, it can feel like proof that you’re doing something wrong. You’re not. For many women, the months after the funeral are the hardest part of all.

Why it can feel harder now

In the early weeks, shock and busyness carry you. There are visitors, phone calls and a hundred things to sign. When all of that quiets down, the loss has room to land. That’s often when the loneliness moves in, right when the people around you assume you’re doing better.

Your body is part of this too. Grief is a full body event. The stress of loss can leave your mind foggy for months. You forget words mid sentence. You walk into a room and forget why. Small decisions, like what to make for dinner, can feel strangely impossible. Widows call this the fog. It’s real, it’s common, and for most women it slowly lifts with time.

Those words were written by a man looking out over complete devastation, everything he knew lying in ruins. He wasn’t writing from a place of having it all figured out. He was writing from the fog. And what he landed on wasn’t an explanation. It was a promise that God’s mercy would still be there in the morning, even when his heart couldn’t hold much else.

You don’t have to understand faith perfectly to borrow that promise. Some women I’ve walked with, women who wouldn’t call themselves religious, have told me they started saying those words out loud on the hardest mornings, almost like a lifeline. You’re welcome to try it too, whatever you believe.

Grief comes in waves, not stages

You may have heard of the five stages of grief. I want to gently correct something, because it causes real harm. Grief was never meant to be a staircase you climb in order and then finish. Grief counselors today describe it more like waves. Some days the water is calm. Some days it knocks you flat, weeks or even years later, with no warning at all.

A hard day months from now doesn’t mean you’ve gone backward. It means you loved him, and love doesn’t keep a schedule. There is no wrong way to do this. Only your way, on your timeline.

And please don’t sit alone in the quiet if you can help it. Call one person this week and tell her the truth about how you’re doing. People often pull back because they don’t know what to say, not because they don’t care. Sometimes they just need you to open the door.

Give yourself the same patience you’d offer a friend walking through this. Your mind will come back to you. The waves will soften. And in the meantime, His mercies really are new every morning, fog and all.

Blessings,
Pastor Howard