Gaining my Lost Sense of Well-being

The day that I heard the death of my husband was the saddest day of my life. It would be the
first night that I couldn’t be with my husband at my bedside. It was already 3 AM, and my tears
would not stop rolling down my cheeks. I felt exhausted and mentally sick. I just couldn’t sleep
at all.

This continued for months. I was helpless and frail, the emotions got all over me. The disbelief
still lingered in my mind, I cried in gasps, I wept softly, I yelled at the sky. I continued to say
the word 'no’ and the disbelief still gets into me. I have seen myself smelling my husband’s
clothes and making me remember our memories with him. Smell is the sense most closely tied
to memories.

Numbness continued to linger in my mind. The feeling of worries and fears kept haunting me. I
kept on insisting within myself that I can’t do anything without him anymore. I have realized
that my sense of well-being has lost in me, and this is what I know my husband wouldn’t want
me to do. As he sees me now, I know he doesn’t want me to feel this way any longer.

I paused for a moment and thought well about how I am feeling. I gave consideration on what
is running in my mind and what I want to run in my mind.

Because I want to solve this state of mine, I focused with what makes me happy and thought
more and more about positive emotions. This includes happiness and gratification that I could
get from being satisfied with life, fulfillment, and positive functioning and most importantly,
functioning in the absence of negative emotions. This way, I would also be able to see what is
important to me and what is in my life that would make me continue to live by the moments.

Aside from that, I need to start it by eating well and eating healthy. As they all say, well-being
goes beyond wellness. It is a complex blend of other aspects such as our physical,
psychological, social, and relational aspects.

This has helped me clear my mind when I started to eat well. For the following months, I had
been grieving. But just recently, this pandemic struck me hard. Discernment comes in the midst
of a global crisis. I thought that at this crucial point of my life, I came to realize that it is not
only me that fights the battle. Anyone else does, most especially to those who are inflicted with
Covid virus. Going through this crisis is indeed not easy, and has never been easy with anyone
else’s too. Though we were fighting dissimilar struggles, I knew that we could get through this
together.

For the past few weeks, I noticed that I began to appreciate every single moment of my life. My
life’s perspective was beginning to change. I have realized that my children, family and friends
are the most precious gifts I ever have in this world. And if I continue to be sorry and mourn, it
could not do well to me, my children and everyone around me. Valuing them is the least I could
do to convey my love to everyone in my life. I felt that I needed to show them that it is time to
rise up and be grateful. God has always been with me and always will be. I believe that GOD
has plans for each one of us. I know for sure that God is helping my husband up in heaven in
taking care of me and his children.

This has given me a sense of awareness about everything that has ever happened to me. How
will my children see me if I will continue not to help myself? How will they look up on me if I
can’t even try to build myself up?

I knew then and there that having sense of well-being was not enough, because I need to have
a sense of purpose as well. I needed motivation that would drive me toward a satisfying future.
This will then get the most of life and it will help me achieve what matters to me most.

I know I'm not alone with this grief or this fear, however odd it may sound. My children, 17 and
7 years old deserve more of my attention. So we’ve let ourselves grief together and I would
often find myself talking about him and let my children feel more comfortable talking about
him, talking about the things we all missed about him or what he would do or say in any given
situation. None of us knew how to snap into some kind of new normal without him; because we
lost the most important person in our lives, someone that we love, and the “not knowing” what
to do was brutal. There was no road map, so we were all left like a little lost lamb, wondering
what to do, what to say and how to act.

Now that I get to see my sense of well-being and realize my sense of purpose, I have seen that
based on my contemplation, this feeling may take me weeks and months, and maybe years to
disappear, but I knew there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. God will not allow bad
things to happen to me and my family. Someday, an epiphany on all these shall come my way.
I prayed to God that soon, that day shall come that I don't have to push my pain down, fight it
or try to make it go away. I will have him carry it with me. The laughter and tears, joys and
sorrows; I will embrace them all within me, for with those 20 years of roller coaster ride, I knew
I rode it with him.