I was reading a local blog written by the wife of soldier deployed in Iraq. Today she was talking about sharing with your spouse the little things that happen each day. The conversations that are filled with the mundane daily events that fill our days. It reminded me of an old post I wrote about the same concept, of sharing those events, and how for someone who is widowed that is one of the things that you grieve the loss of. When I went back and read my post and then re-read Jan Wesner's post I wondered if the wives and husbands of the soldiers aren't in some way grieving the loss of their spouses from their daily lives. Over the past four years of the war I've listened to many wives being interviewed on the radio and TV and was surprised and how familiar their experiences sounded to me. And I think that I now realize that what many of them are doing is very much like grieving. And it explains why I am always drawn to those stories, and why they always have an emotional affect on me.

I take some comfort reading Todd's blog over at Rhymes With Drowning. His recent post briefly mentions an idea that I've always believed but didn't really have any validation for. It is the idea that when widows and widowers tell their stories they are healing themselves. I remember in the early days it certainly was something that was an emotional release of some sort that always left me feeling cleansed.