Jealousy, the aspect of grief no one talks about

After my husband died, I searched the internet for information on the stages of grief. There are about five to seven different stages, depending on which which website you’re reading. Shock, denial, guilt, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance are the ones most people are familiar with. I wanted to read about these steps so I’d know what I’d be facing in the aftermath of my husband’s death. I wanted to be prepared in the best way that I could for the roller coaster of emotions that was coming for me.

In reading about them, I thought that you go through the stages in order. That was logical to me and I assumed that this was the “rule” of going through the stages of grief. That didn’t happen, at least not to me. I have jumped all over these stages, so much so that I feel like the steel ball inside a pinball machine. I’m being slammed up against all the different bumpers, back and forth, and there’s no controlling it. Some days I’m still in shock; some days it still doesn’t seem real. Some days I’m mad as hell that he died and some days I feel terrible guilt for not being able to ultimately save him. Every day I feel some level of depression. The stage of acceptance seems so far off in the distance that it leaves me wondering if it will ever show up. For now, that stage seems unattainable.

There’s one aspect of grief that people don’t really talk about. It’s jealousy, that horrible little green-eyed monster that people who are grieving either don’t want anyone to know they’re experiencing, or they completely deny it exists for them because they’re embarrassed that they feel it. You can also call it resentment or envy. It doesn’t really matter which one because they’re all pretty much the same thing.

Well, let me tell you this……it DOES exist when you’re going through the grief process. It took me a while to admit to anyone else that I was having feelings of jealousy towards other people whose spouses were still alive. I was (still am) ashamed of having those feelings and I feel guilty as hell for feeling them. Maybe writing about it and putting it out there for everyone to read will help alleviate some of that guilt. Maybe it won’t. I don’t really know.

I took me a long while to be able to hit the like button on social media posts of people celebrating an anniversary or pictures of them and their spouses. Any kind of picture or post that showed them in any state of happiness, I just could not like. It was just too painful for me. Why did they get to have their spouse still when mine had died? It just was not fair.

When I would see couples out in public together, I could not be happy for them. Again, I felt the same jealousy mentioned above. Sometimes I wanted to run up to these people and scream at them “Don’t take anything for granted! Cherish every single second with the one you love because it could all be gone tomorrow!” Of course, I didn’t do that but the look on my face probably gave my feelings away.

I also felt some pretty strong resentment towards people who are horrible human beings but yet THEY get to keep on living while my husband, who was a really good man, did not. It’s like the old saying “Only the good die young” is true. Months back someone told me that they thought the reason God took the good ones early but allowed those people who weren’t so good to keep on living was to give them extra time to become a good person and get things right. I guess it’s a plausible explanation, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any better.

I just said above what a lot of people going through the grieving process won’t say. I would bet the farm that nearly every person who has lost their spouse feels the very same feelings, even if they won’t say it. That’s okay, I said it for you. They really should acknowledge them though because in doing so it will help them heal.

I’ve sat with these feelings of jealousy, resentment and envy for three months now. I’ve mostly kept them to myself as I don’t want (or need) any judgement from others for having such shameful feelings rolling around inside me. I’ve written about them in the journal I take with me on Sundays when I sit in the back pew of a church. That journal is for my eyes only for now as it’s an outpouring of all the emotions I feel from losing my husband. The anger, guilt, and depression is all in there in the pages of that journal, scribbled down in my handwriting that isn’t always so legible. Writing about all of this is what is keeping me sane and is helping me to process these stages of grief……and tame the green-eyed monster known as jealousy.