The pain of loss and heartbreak

I have been married for 53 years, a happy and fulfilling life in partnership with a wonderful lady from Sweden. I met her on a summer Christian mission in France in 1967. We were going door to door selling Christian books and sharing the gospel. We were married in Sweden in April 1972, our name and the date of our marriage engraved on our simple gold wedding rings.

My wife fell ill in 2022 and commenced a slow decline in health both in body and mind. I became her full-time carer. We had made our vows “in sickness and in health” and it was my privilege to look after her, learning new skills in shopping, cooking, gardening, cleaning and many other household chores. The specialists and nurses of the NHS were superb. We installed a stair lift and I bought a bath lift, but she became weaker until one day (on my birthday) she fell and broke her leg. It led to five weeks in hospital and she finally died on 7 October 2025.

I was, and remain, heartbroken. My wife has been the love of my life, a wonderful Christian who knew why she was here and where she was going. I have shed many tears and learned many valuable lessons, which I hope can be of benefit to others.

I am not alone

It should be no surprise to remember that we are not alone in our grief. I am so fortunate to have a wonderful son and daughter who share my grief and have both gone the extra mile to help us through this time of sadness. In my regular devotions over these weeks, I have also focused special prayer on my many friends who have also suffered loss, as I am now suffering loss, of a wife, husband, child, or someone they have loved dearly. The list is long. We almost form a community of grief. I understand their pain so much better now than I ever did before. Now we carry within ourselves the pain that comes from love, a dearly beloved now absent from our lives. It will come to us all sooner or later.

I sat in church recently next to a lady with whom I have never shared intimately until now. She knows my wife has died and she told me that her husband died from COVID, at a time when she could not hold his hand or sit with him as he declined. What pain she had been through! Far more than what I am now experiencing.

“My heart grieves with you in this difficult time,” wrote a friend. “I have been gathering the courage to write because I understand, in a very personal way, the pain of being separated from a loved one. Having walked through a similar valley with my dear husband, I know how deeply such sorrow touches the soul. When I read your message, tears filled my eyes.”

Another friend lost his wife two years ago. He wrote on Facebook: “Time has passed, but it hasn’t made her absence easier – she is missed every single day by those of us she left behind.”

So many have suffered loss, and the greater the love, the greater the pain of parting. It is a part of the normal pattern of life. None of us will live on earth forever, and when the sadness comes we will know that we are not alone. There is great comfort in knowing, and praying for, those who have experienced the sadness of loss.

Struggle to believe she’s gone

My head tells me exactly what has happened. My wife was 86. She was ill. She was so tired that she sometimes told me she wanted to sleep and not wake up. She was ready and she knew a better life awaited her with Christ, in whom she had believed for much of her life. My head tells me I still have much to do as long as I have life and health. But my heart still tells me this is surely a nightmare from which I will awake. Surely she will come home. Surely she is here. She can hear me and is waiting for me to tell her again how much I love her.

“Be kind to yourself and give time to grieve,” wrote another friend who lost his wife some years ago. “It comes and goes in waves of pain and disbelief that it can really have happened that you and she cannot share life together any more. Then for a time it is normal until another wave comes. Gradually they get less and the new normal takes over.”

It is okay to cry

When Jesus stood outside the tomb of His friend Lazarus, He wept. I understand now why He wept, as I have wept constantly over the past weeks. Jesus knew that He would bring Lazarus back to life. He had already told Martha: “If a man dies, he will live again.” And yet He wept. How could He not have wept, as everyone else was weeping at the tomb? The Jews said to one another: “See how He loved him!” He wept in the face of death because death is a terrible thing, never part of God’s original plan. Jesus shared the sadness because He loved the family in their time of loss. He surely knew what they were going through and He empathised with them, understanding and sharing their emotions. Surely there were tears in His eyes as He prayed before the tomb: “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus had deep and very human feelings. I can identify with Him. I know there is life after death – and yet I understand better now why Jesus wept.

A friend wrote to me: “I join you in your pain. I do know how you really feel. Please don’t put on a happy face because you may think it’s expected from you. Remember, our tears are the words with which we tell our loving Father of our deepest pain.”

Another, whose husband died more than two years ago, said: “The struggles and tears will always be there but in time it will not be all day or every day. In time there will be more time between the anger, struggles and tears. And they will come at the most bizarre times.”

David writes in Psalm 6: “For the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.”

True, our tears are the words with which we tell our loving Father of our deepest pain. They also tell the world how much we loved the one whom we have lost. When the Jews saw Jesus weep at the tomb they said: “See how He loved him!” After my wife died, I wrote: “I have never known the meaning of true love so deeply as I have over the past month.”

Be prepared

It is both helpful and risky to look back. I am slow to learn, but I am experiencing the danger of looking back over the past months and saying to myself: “If only… .” Over the past 53 years we have very rarely disagreed or argued. My wife and I have been totally supportive of each other. It has been a wonderful marriage. I have never wanted to attempt to have an affair or be disloyal. I have considered the greatest meaning of true love to be total loyalty.

When my wife became ill and doctors’ and hospital visits became more regular, I was ready to go the extra mile above and beyond to make life easier for her. When she entered hospital I spent six to seven hours every day at her bedside, holding her hand, believing, hoping and praying (beyond advice) that she would come home and recover. Given the opportunity, I would do it again, the basic expectations of love and loyalty. I have no regrets, but still my mind sometimes says: “If only.”

At the same time, not everyone has it so straightforward. Few marriages last so long and leave so few regrets, and then the “if onlys” can become more painful, accompanied perhaps by guilt, a sense of failure and the wish to go back and put things right. For those who are still in a close and caring relationship – whether to a husband, wife or partner, a son or a daughter or other loved one – and still alive to enjoy it, there is still time to say “I love you”, “I am sorry”, “Thank you”, “Let’s work at it and try again” – or just “Jesus loves us and forgives us both”.

Don’t wait until it is too late to send a gift, a bunch of flowers, to go the extra mile to show that you care. We may never really know how much we love someone until they have gone, but we can still learn the wonderful art of caring, trusting, wanting to be known as one who counts love of greater value than pride, happiness or always wanting to be right.

Work now to ensure that you will never need to say: “If only… .”

We know that we are not as those who have no hope

I have received many messages of condolence for the death of my wife, but among them came this one: “I am so sorry to hear that your wife has gone to be with the Lord.” No, no. To know that she has gone to be with Christ is a cause for huge relief and even joy. It is a comfort for me to know that she is now with the Jesus whom she loved and served throughout much of her life. The ones who grieve and weep are those who are left behind. She chose this Scripture to be read at her memorial service: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14v1-3).

It makes no sense to me that so many people prefer to hope for the best, or believe they will live forever, or that we can just have fun and forget that one day we will die, followed by some uncertain oblivion. Faced with the absolute certainty of death, it is madness not to trust the one who said: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11v25-26).

Not only that, but Jesus backed up His claim by personally rising from the dead. “I was dead,” he said, “and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!” (Rev.1v18) “Because I live, you also will live.” ( John 14v19) My wife and I have spent much of our lives telling people that Jesus is the Way and that by faith in Him we can be sure of eternal life. How could we continue to grieve when we have such a hope?

My whole perspective on eternity has changed in the past months. I trust the truth of the Bible, and from page one to the end the Bible assumes that there is a greater world beyond the one we live in now. It is a world described as “glorious”, the dwelling place of the (so far) invisible God, “the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb.11v10) The sadness and the reason for tears is the parting, the separation from the one I have loved so much for the past 53 years. My daughter-in-law wrote to me: “I know that one of her greatest comforts towards the end would be knowing that the separation that you now face is temporary; that you will again one day be reunited. Until then you remain together in spirit every hour of every day.”

I admit that I pray every day that the God whom I love will look after my wife (I know He will, as He has promised) and will give me the strength, for as long as He keeps me on earth, to serve Him and complete the work He has for me still to do.

For my dear wife there may be a time of waiting – as there is for me. For me, while God gives me strength and health, there is work to do, above all to tell the world that there is hope for us all, that death, however certain, is not a destination to be feared, but a doorway to a wonderful world where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev. 21v4). God will surely wipe away every tear.