Healing Process

My wife of 12 years died last Friday from cancer. Today is Wednesday and I haven't been able to sleep much since it happened. This morning I decided to write a journal to help me cope with the way I'm feeling.  Last night I had a talk with her mother and father. We shared some intimate things with one another and I was able to get to know them a little better. Her father explained to me why he and his first wife, my wife's mother, divorced. He also shared his heart being broken because soon after the divorce, his ex wife moved 7 hours away and took their daughter. He talked about how much it hurt him to not be able to spend time with his daughter, but he was able to pick up the pieces and find love again. He re-married and started a new life with his new family. His new wife had two children before they got married and he never had another child.

My wife would often speak to me about how she felt abandoned as a child. I remember her telling me that even though she visited her father and his new family in the summer, she often felt a little different because it wasn't the same. She felt more like a step-daughter than a real daughter.

And so now I am learning more and more things about my wife and how her childhood affected her as an adult. Her not being able to trust people is partly due to her life as a child. She lived with a single mother in a big city and she would have lots of different baby sitters. She longed for her father and mother to be together again and began to develop a sense of untrustworthiness in people.

For these reasons, I understand why she had trust issues with me. During the last two years of our marriage, I was her caretaker. I drove her to her doctors appointments, made several trips to emergency room, picked up prescriptions, brought dinner to her while she was a patient in the hospital, helped her get out of bed, helped her to get dressed, answered every text. In addition to being her caretaker, I also took on more responsibilities with raising our two children.  I had to cook more, clean, wash clothes, drive them to school, pick them up from school, take days off from work, attend school related activities, drive to practice.

Towards the end of her life she admitted to me that she never really trusted me because of my past relationships with women before our marriage. Even after 13 years of marriage, 2 children, a house, two cars, open assess to all my social network passwords, and me taken care of her, I always felt like she never really trusted me.  Now that she's gone, I now understand that it had a lot to do with her childhood and I will always love her. Forever.