Inside of me, there were words, coming from the ache in my stomach.  My stomach really hurt.  It was a real physical stomach ache, but I didn’t know why it hurt so badly.  I get them every once in a while, but this time is was different. 
I felt that there was something different about this pain. It was deeper. It was sharper. It kept gnawing at me in a way that I thought it might eat a part of my insides away.  This wasn’t the worst part though. Pain that is physical and emotional hits you, hurts you in more ways.

The scariest part of this pain in my body, was how much I felt it wanted to stay.  I felt like it wanted to make a home there, to settle in and begin to eat me from the inside out.  When this experience came, it had been about 4 months since Grant had died. 

It was just long enough that the time since his death had begun to feel substantial.   It was still short enough though, that I felt that it was just yesterday. I also still had the sense that the life I remembered wasn’t taken from me and there was still a chance this was all just a bad dream. 

It wasn’t. My body was trying to tell me to wake up, to feel and to come to the reality of what I was doing.  What I was denying.  I sat down.  I sat and felt the pain so deeply. When I did this, the pain spoke to me.  The words were simple, clear and direct.  “This will kill you.” 

Those were the words my pain communicated.   ‘What will kill me,’ I thought?  The pain?  Maybe.  It was getting worse.  It hurt a lot.  I calmly thought about that.  That idea didn’t feel scary.  ‘What will kill me?’ I thought again.

The next part came, a feeling.  ‘What feeling?’ I tried to understand.  ‘The ones you’re keeping inside of you,’ was the answer.   Oh… I thought… those ones.   That makes sense.  Yes, I can see that.  All these feelings inside of me, they will kill me. 

It started in my stomach and will slowly eat me away.  Eat at me in the way that those cells do when they consume with an insatiable appetite and eventually kill the host….  Ahhhhh… I see.  I see what you’re saying.  I need to not keep this all inside of me. 

‘Exactly.’  If I do, it will kill me, eat away at me until I don’t have enough of me left. And I will die. ‘Yes.  Don’t let that happen.’ That was it.  My body went back to being quiet and left me to contemplate what I had just learned. 
These feelings inside me will kill me if I don’t process through them. I need to let them out, and let them become free from me.  I needed to let go.  I didn’t know how, but I knew I must.  I didn’t want to die from my husband’s death.  I had too much to live for. I still do.