Do I deserve this torment over lost love?

PEOPLE who have lost a loved one know that grief can be like a large, grey dog: always by your side like a shadow, never wanting to leave you, often weighing you down with its needs. Yet loved.

Grief itself can feel essential; a permanent memorial to love. That’s why so many of us feel guilty when, at last, the day comes when we do not think of our lost one even once.

I’m glad that writing to this column has given you the chance to be honest about these tumultuous thoughts.

You ask if it is normal to feel like this. The answer is yes: grief and guilt are normal, and so is confusion, and these emotions do not conform to any pattern.

You are still ‘overwhelmed’ five-and-a-half years after Ann’s death because of how you say you behaved when she was alive.

You know you were blessed with a good and lovely wife. That’s why

you are racked with anguished longing to have your time all over again — time in which you would be a very different sort of husband.

To help you make sense of all this, I’m going to let another reader help you. Glenys wrote me this lovely letter three months ago, full of wisdom:

‘It’s just over two years since my husband died. We had 34 years, but, for the last 20 of them, Peter suffered ill health. I know people who’ve lost life partners in different circumstances and they all have different outlooks.

‘ One train of thought that helps is to put myself in Peter’s place and think what he would want for me. It doesn’t make it easier — but I honour his life by living mine.

‘In the months after he died, I used to pray to die, but it isn’t my time yet, so life must go on.

‘It is all I can do for him now and, when we meet again, I want to be able to look at him in the knowledge that I tried my best — as he did in life.

‘I don’t always achieve it, but I take my time, pick myself up and start again, one thing at a time . . . the price of love is grief, and I believe the deeper the love, the deeper the grief.’

Listen to Glenys and consider what Ann would want.

Surely, she would ask you to start to live a good, happy life, for her sake? To talk to your daughter, watch the leaves, listen to the birds, try new things, eat good food . . . all the wonderful things Ann cannot do.

If you still drink heavily, you should look at that for Ann’s sake. You say that you talk to her each day, so promise her you will change, get your life in order, remember the good times you shared and try to forget the bad.

You are the keeper of her flame, so please, keep it bright — not at risk of being extinguished by sighs and tears. What’s done is done, but love is never done — and it’s clear no matter how you behaved, you loved your wife.

You are forgiven — and what you now ‘deserve’ is not ‘torment’, but peace.