Everywhere I look,

He is not here.

I know it, yet I don’t.

It is too final, too raw.

The scariest feeling I have is in my upper abdomen. Scary because it feels like fear. Scary because there is no one to turn to who can chase it away, who can reassure me, who can make it better for me.

Because it cannot go away.

I am writing this column on the weekend because I am compelled to write it. I submitted a column to editor Mike well over one week ago. The column was a shift from grief to current events which took some emotional gymnastics to write.

Editor Mike even commented that it must have been a difficult transition.

Yes, it was, I acknowledged.

I cannot tell you about the column.

I do not remember.

All I know is that in the intervening time, wonderful people, some I know, some I do not, have come up to me usually with a hug or written to me, each one with an understanding of my great loss and boundless grief for husband Paul.

Some recalled their own profound grief, and some are living it now just as I am.

We are a family brought together by pain, unlike anything most have known.

Writing without words

One reason I did not write about this stage of grief is that I had no words for the feeling. I want to describe it, to tell you about it, but all I could do was feel it.

Now, I write for us.

Our grief resides in our solar plexus, a point in our upper abdomen somewhere around our stomachs where a bundle of nerves affecting most internal abdominal organs reside. The solar plexus feels emotion and informs the organs (esp. digestive) when to respond.

We know that when we feel “fight or flight,” our digestive system shuts down so we can run or fight.

Similarly, grief affects our appetites and digestion.

I know that, for me at this stage, the place keeps filling up as if grief was a renewable resource.

My sense is that holding grief is protection, a place for grief to stay until we can face the pain. I know after I cry, the feeling is less intense until grief begins to build again.

The feeling is heavy. Grief is heavy.

Heavy like a burden we would never choose to have.

My eyes, my nose, my ears, my throat feel full.

My inclination is to yawn, perhaps to escape in sleep.

The feeling yearns for expression.

How?

An anguished scream? Uncontrollable sobbing? Rage?

What is it?

Unrequited love?

Fear of more pain than we can handle.

Fear we will be lost in it if we go too deep?

The path

Alas, grief lives a life of its own, a sort of knowing that it must be expressed in the way its beholder needs it to be useful. My task is to make it a path to its end at which I will honor Paul, our love, our life together, death and my enormous sorrow.

It is the necessary path of the widow, the widower and lost lovers. As many have written, grief is love.

And we on this path will continue to honor our lost one and our shared love as we travel it. We will keep all the joys, sorrow and daily lives we shared close so that, at the end, we are still whole.

Bertha Cooper, an award-winning featured columnist with the Sequim Gazette, spent her career years in health care administration, program development and consultation. Cooper and her husband have lived in Sequim more than 25 years. Reach her at columnists@sequimgazette.com.