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Dear Joseph,
My heartfelt condolences on the sudden loss of your
wife. It must have been a terrible shock, with the
added burden of the natural reaction of post-traumatic
stress and grief from not being able to save her.
This natural reaction brings with it great anger
and a sort of semi-permanent state of alarm, with
a great deal of survival guilt. This alarm can cause
sleep problems, anger, and hyper-reactivity. Your
anger and feeling that there was something
you could have done is natural.
Your response of bargaining with God, thinking
there was something you did that caused this, is
part of the syndrome. Finally, one reaction to a
loss like this is that you hold on very much to the
event, you are fixed on it, or it keeps intruding
in your thoughts and feelings. This can prevent proper
grieving, which is a gradual letting go of the person.
You would benefit from some very targeted PTSD (Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder) counseling to deal with this great
trauma that you have suffered. The counseling for
it can be pretty brief and effective. Your traumatic
grief is, I repeat, a natural reaction to a sudden
loss over which you felt helpless.
As to your specific questions, the terms you were
seeking were probably conjugal rights, the
rights of Matrimony. As we know, the state of Matrimony
is until death, not beyond, though the spiritual
and human bond can be forever.
Your wife needs your prayers now. Pray for her a
lot, and you and she will both come to peace.
She needs your prayers. She received the very great
blessing of a peaceful passing without pain or fear.
She did die without the opportunity for the last
sacraments, however, so she would certainly appreciate
your prayers. Thank God that she could be with you
when she died
— she knew it, even if you were asleep and
didn't know it. Try to see things from her perspective.
Dear Joseph, she died because God called her at
that time, not because you did something wrong. The
Bible tells us that God does not desire our death,
which is why He took our death and made it a doorway
into [Everlasting] Life. Your sin did not cause death. Death came
into the world with Adam and Eve, and Jesus has made
it a friend rather than an enemy. Again, I am sorry
for your awful loss.
Let yourself let go of the anger and feel your pain.
You will come to an acceptance of her death. It has happened and can't be undone. So, with Christ,
we accept this Cup and offer it to the Father. In
the Father's Will, you will come to a sort of union
with your wife.
God bless,
Mary Ann
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