How Am I So Okay?

I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately.

I felt a huge shift in my state of being about six months after Steve died. Everyone was telling me it would be a couple years before I felt like myself again, but somehow I returned to my usual joyful self in a mere half-year. I never imagined I would be feeling this fine after such a devastating loss. How did I do it??

I let myself feel very intense feelings early on and didn’t try to hide them away. They needed to be purged from my system.
I did the work. And grief is A LOT of work! I went to therapy. I journaled. I talked to him daily. I made photo albums and video compilations to fill my brain space with all the good memories and not dwell on the hard times. I attended workshops for widows. I found ways to keep his spirit alive. My Gifts from Steve meditation ritual creates a comforting structure to my week and ensures that I hang on to the pieces of him that I don’t want to lose.
I accepted reality. Stephen had struggles that were not going to magically go away. And once I accepted that, I felt a profound sense of peace that his struggles are gone. Because it’s really hard to watch someone you love suffer.
There’s something going on in a spiritual realm that I cannot explain. (More on this below.)

While I certainly deserve some of the credit for my astounding recovery from this tragedy, I cannot take all the credit. Something deeply spiritual happened in October that is just as significant, if not more significant, than all the processing work I did.

Steve’s mom Dee stayed with me for two weeks to help me sort through his things and start to prepare the house to sell. While she was there, I had a very vivid dream. In the dream, at one point I thought “This feels so real, it can’t be a dream!” Stephen and I were just hanging out, laughing, like the good old days. After awhile, his body started to gradually fade away, becoming translucent. He said to me, “I have to go now.” I asked him, “Where are you going?” And he replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll always be there beside you.” Then he dissolved into a misty silhouette, until his physical form was completely gone.

I woke up with a profound sense of peace. This deep feeling that he is well. I told Dee about the dream, because she’s analyzed dreams for years. I even had the opportunity to share the experience with her dream group on Zoom. Dee told me that she thought it wasn’t just a dream, but rather what she called a “visitation.” She thinks that Stephen’s spirit was communicating with me directly, and I do believe that she is right. Because ever since, I have been weirdly okay. I thought for awhile that it was a temporary lift in my mood, but it’s now been five months and I’m STILL weirdly okay. Once in awhile I’ll have a short cry, but the vast majority of the time, I am genuinely happy. And I don’t walk around picturing Steve beside me all the time, because that would be mentally exhausting and prevent me from being in the present moment. I just have this sense of trust that he’s keeping an eye on things for me.

I am not going to claim to know anything about the details of how the afterlife works, but I will say that I am certain that Steve’s spirit is alive, and he is doing whatever he is able to “care for my spirit until we are together beyond the stars”, just like he promised in our wedding vows. Anyone who knew Steve well knew that he had a fragile body and mind. But he made up for that with an overabundance of spirit. Now that his spirit is no longer limited by a broken physical form, he can fully shine. I often look up at the sun and say “Hello, Steve.” Because I feel he is shining that brightly.