Mourning a Spouse’s Death

After cremations services, the spouses of those who have died will go into a mourning period. Losing a spouse is one of the hardest deaths most people experience. The longer you’ve been together, the more difficult your mourning and rebuilding period will be.

There are many emotions and feelings that you may wrestle with after the death of your spouse. In the beginning, you may feel numb or in shock. You may look for them in your home or call out their name, only to realize they are not there – and won’t ever be there again.

You may be afraid. Spouses, over time, fall into a rhythm of teamwork that is natural and effortless. They are a unit that functions well most of the time. When one member of that team or unit is gone, the other must do everything they did.

For example, if your spouse took care of the finances of the household, you may not even know where to begin to take over (hopefully, you have instructions, but that doesn’t always happen). You may not know what bills you have that need to be paid or when they need to be paid, so you will have to figure that out on your own.

Perhaps your spouse was the one who cooked most of the meals or who took care of car maintenance and yardwork. Now, you may need to learn how to cook or learn how and when to do car maintenance and yardwork.

There are thousands of things that each spouse does in a marriage. It is not until one spouse dies, that the other spouse becomes aware of all of those things they didn’t have to worry about.

It is not unusual for surviving spouses to feel guilty that their loved one died and they were left to live on. It is also not unusual for surviving spouses to feel as if their own lives are over and to wish that they would die too, because they don’t want to live without their spouse who died.

All of these emotions and changes make the mourning process for your spouse much more complicated because, on the one hand, you have to go on with life, and, on the other hand, you have to say goodbye to the life you had with your spouse.

You may find that mourning your spouse comes with physical side effects. You may find it difficult to sleep through the night. You may not feel like eating. You make find that you are distracted all the time and you have a hard time concentrating on anything.

You may also find that decision making is almost impossible. It is highly recommended by most professionals that mourning spouses don’t make any major decisions in the first year after their spouses die.

The reason for this is that you may make impulsive decisions that you will regret later, after the intensity of mourning for your spouse subsides. Major decisions include things like selling your home and moving somewhere else, dating and remarrying, making big financial changes, and changing jobs or careers.

As your mourning the death of your spouse, seek some support for your grief. Your funeral home is an embedded part of the community, so they can give you good advice about how to locate local grief resources.

Helping you find grief resources is one of the cremations services we offer, so you can depend on our compassionate and experienced team at Hopler & Eschbach Funeral Home to help you.