Cristina Spiteri shares her thoughts about grief, a year after her husband, Sandro, passed away

Yesterday, Monday, at 2pm, I felt pain rip through my whole being like a jagged knife through fabric. It felt like a vice that tightened round my throat, making it hard to breathe, forcing tears to spill on to my cheeks. Up until then I had been working well and calmly all morning. Why the sudden change? 2pm on a Monday is always such a difficult time for me… yesterday marked 52 weeks since my husband breathed his last and I was plunged into grief, the most difficult experience of my life.

Grief – what is it? No one and nothing could have prepared me for it. It is like a tsunami that creeps up on me and hits me with huge waves of overwhelming sorrow. It is a very personal and individual process.

No one grieves in quite the same way, just as we do not love in the same way. I read somewhere that grief is the price we pay for love. Indeed, when we lose someone we love dearly, the pain of loss is huge and, I guess, proportional to the depth of love we had for that person.

Cristina Spiteri with her husband, Sandro.

I am discovering that grief can take various forms. On some days, the sadness can feel calm and quiet, like sediment that settles at the bottom of my heart.

At other times, it can feel like soft bubbles that swell and fill up every space of my heart – the sadness is ever present but contained. But then there are days when it feels like painful thunderbolts striking me harshly, the sadness overwhelming me and boiling over in every part of my being.

Grief pushes you into a totally different dimension of life

Grief can be indescribable, unbelievable and excruciatingly painful. Sometimes, it feels like an ugly octopus with slimy tentacles that wrap tightly around my heart and, slowly but surely, block out all the light, leaving me lost in the darkness.

Grief pushes you into a totally different dimension of life. You suddenly realise that your life has undergone a quantum shift and all that was normal and ordinary no longer exists for you. You realise with a shock that what seemed like the loss of one person is actually multiple losses.

You lose not only your loved one – and that, on its own, is a huge loss. But you also lose yourself, your sense of identity, your sense of purpose, your source of fulfilment and joy in life. You find yourself grappling to make sense of a new and bewildering reality.

Actually the world around you has not changed. You cannot believe how the world keeps on turning, how life continues very much as before that tragic moment, but it does! Somehow you also have to keep on living in a world that is now completely and utterly changed for you. Grief is like becoming an alien in your very own land. Your perspective on life is changed and nothing will ever be the same again.

While your inner core is plunged into a dark bottomless pit, you continue to live and to strive to make new meaning. New layers of life evolve around your inner core of sadness.

There is a natural pull towards life. Life begets life and,  slowly but surely, you will start to notice new subtle signs of life being born around your woundedness. You begin to navigate between the inner core of sadness and the outer layers of life. Gradually, you will notice gentle rays of light illuminate your darkness and you start to make tiny steps towards light, hope, new life.

Cristina Spiteri is a wife, mother and teacher.