After the death of a husband, how long does it take to heal? When is grieving finished?

Fourteen months after Nate died, as I looked back over that year’s blog posts, I was surprised to realize not every one of them had been about him. At first I was appalled but later realized it was a sign of a broken heart being mended.

C. S. Lewis published a small book of journal entries penned during deep sorrow over losing his wife to cancer. A Grief Observed was so personal, he wouldn’t allow his name on the cover but instead ghost-published as N. W. Clerk. After Lewis died several years later, his stepson republished it revealing his true identity.

Lewis went through raw grief, doubting God’s love and availability to him, wondering whether there was an afterlife at all. But by the end of the book, his relationship with the Lord had been restored, and his grief was beginning to heal. He wrote:

“There was no sudden, striking emotion. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight when you first notice them, they have already been going on for a long time.”

That year after Nate died I was encouraged to realize my healing had already been going on for a long time. It wasn’t that I was “finished,” but just as Lewis learned, raw emotion  slowly mellows. Instead of labeling Nate as “missing”, as having left a big, empty hole in our family, I began to think of him as our larger-than-life husband and father, the lively, loyal head of our family who was full of personality and loved each of us wholeheartedly.

As one of our kids said somewhere during that first year, “Papa was a legend.” He wasn’t the kind of legend that made the cover of TIME, but a Nyman-legend to be sure. Grief has a way of wrapping what’s good with a negative shroud, but as time passes and we heal, the layers peel away, and the positives come shining through.

God has helped me see more and more of these positives as the years have passed, and I credit him with every bit of my healing. He’s been my constant companion, my shield from despair and, as the biblical David put it, “the lifter of my head.”

Had we known Nate would die at 64, leaving us after only 42 days of warning, we’d have still chosen him for our husband and father. He will always be our main man, the one we wanted then, the one we still love now, and the one for whom we thank God.

“You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and he answered me.” (Psalm 3:3-4)