Jan 072015
  January 7, 2015

I’d had my doubts, but an all male grief support group was better than expected. It seems a masculine point of view is helpful, to the extent that anything is helpful. It’s trendy in my circles to think men and women fundamentally react the same, and so, grieve the same. I’m not an adherent to this point of view.

In the past three months I’ve heard a lot of “Time will make things better” and “You will, eventually, begin to recover.” I have never believed that, nor have I wanted to.

And today, I didn’t hear that.

The group was made up of men who’d been widowed between three months (me) and nine years. And everyone agreed: You never recover. Time does not help. You do not regain purpose. Years make no difference. Either you go on without purpose till you die at some point, or you find someone who can save you (though the second was specifically rejected by several men). It was really refreshing to hear.

So, I’ll be going back. We’ll share feelings of doom, and I can respect that. It’s better than lies.