Your Friend In Grief

Navigating Grief After Losing My Husband

• Melinda Rubinger

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Have you ever felt the weight of grief so heavy that it seemed insurmountable? Join me, Melinda Rubinger, as I share my heart-wrenching journey through the sudden loss of my husband amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 6th, 2020, after selling our house and planning a move to a smaller city, my husband left for a morning walk and never came back. That day shattered my world, leaving me to grapple with the immense void and the daunting task of starting anew. Tune in to hear the raw and emotional recount of that fateful day, and how I began to navigate the overwhelming grief that followed.

Creating a supportive community for those experiencing profound loss is at the core of this podcast. By openly discussing grief and sharing personal stories, we aim to foster an environment where judgment is absent and understanding prevails. This episode underscores the importance of these conversations in helping us process our emotions and move forward, rather than staying stuck in sorrow. Whether you are grieving yourself or looking to support someone who is, connect with us on Instagram and Facebook at "Your Friend in Grief" and become part of a compassionate community where healing and comfort are collectively nurtured.

Speaker 1:

Welcome in friends. My name is Melinda Rubinger and I'm your friend in grief. This is episode one of your friend in grief podcast and today we're going to talk a little bit about my story and why I wanted to start this podcast. So in 2020, we all experienced the COVID-19 pandemic in March and shortly after the pandemic started, obviously we were all living a new way of life, most of us working from home, not socializing, really, you know, wiping down our groceries, all the things that we had never lived through before, right. So my husband got laid off right well into the pandemic and we decided the one thing in our home that had we had not remodeled was the master bathroom, and we decided that we were going to remodel the master bathroom and sell the house. We were going to move out of the big city we were living in and we were going to move to a smaller city, live a smaller life. My husband was probably not ever going to go back into the corporate world. He was a CPA and there were things he could do on the side that would be able to make a living. But we determined we didn't need to focus full time on work as as hard as we had been working. We wanted to live a more balanced life, so that was the plan. So we remodeled the house. We remodeled the bathroom and put the house on the market. He shouldered the bulk of the managing of the home project and showing the house. We had two cats. Every time that we showed the house, we had to move the cats out. We'd take all the food bowls and stuff out, so there was a lot of prep before showing the house, as there always is. We got a contract around the weekend of the 4th of July 2020, and we accepted the contract and we started working on the. There were a few little items that they wanted us to fix or identify, so we started working on those items and getting all of that under control the 4th of July weekend of 2020. On Monday, july 6th it was we'd already signed the paperwork. Everything was good. He had nothing to do with the house that Monday and he said I am going to tomorrow. He's like Monday, I'm going to go for my walk. He used to walk regularly during the week and since the pandemic and the house project he really hadn't had a chance to do that. He picked up his. We'd moved a bunch of stuff to storage and he had picked up his PS4. And he was like I'm gonna go for a walk, I'm gonna play my PlayStation and I'm gonna have a great week. And I said, fantastic, you deserve it.

Speaker 1:

You've been under so much stress, right, and it wasn't just, you know, work stress being laid off. It wasn't just the pandemic stress. It was, you know, there was a lot of crime happening in our city. There was stress around the home sale. There was stress with his family. There was stress with my family. It was all.

Speaker 1:

It was a stressful time 2020. I know of never in my life have I seen more people who've had heart attacks in that time surrounding the pandemic. First starting I multiple people that I know who survived, but my husband went out that morning. So Sunday night we had been watching Schitt's Creek and we were late to the game, and so we watched season six, episode one. He found it. So it was the episode where where they go to look at the event space and it turns out there's a reason that it's a discount on the first Sunday of every month, and so we watched that. We laughed and laughed and laughed, loved that show.

Speaker 1:

We had made hamburgers that night for dinner and it was a normal night. He said he was tired and it was like 10 o'clock. He said he was tired, he was going to go to sleep and I said are you okay if I stay up and read a little bit? The light won't bother you? And he said no, no, that's fine. And he said I'm going to get up and walk in the morning and I'm like okay. So I read for a little bit and then I got sleepy and then we went to sleep and I heard him leave in the morning.

Speaker 1:

I stayed up a little too late reading and I heard him leave in the morning. I couldn't open my eyes, I was so tired. But I heard the front door shut. I heard him get a washcloth out of the bedroom drawer and then I heard the front door close. I went to work. I got up, got dressed a little bit later I started to work and Mike wasn't home. He didn't come back. He hadn't come back.

Speaker 1:

And I realized by eight o'clock it was one thing, but then by nine, nine, 30, 10 o'clock I'm starting to get panicked. And I absolutely was panicked. And so I called some friends I double checked, you know, to make sure the cars were still there Like maybe he came back and ran an errand and I didn't hear him. No, I kept blowing up his phone. I was calling him, I was video calling him, I was doing everything I could to like, maybe you know, I thought my gosh, maybe he lost his phone. I don't know what's happened. Finally, around 11 o'clock, somebody answered the phone and I said this is my husband's phone. Who are you? You need to tell me that my husband's okay. And they said ma'am, are you alone? And I was like that right, there was a trigger for me because I absolutely knew that something was not right. And they told me that my husband had died while he was walking, had died while he was walking, and from there my entire foundation of my world absolutely shattered and fell out from under me.

Speaker 1:

I was unprepared to lose my husband. I was unprepared, completely unprepared. And having to start over the house was under contract. I absolutely did not need to live in a four level townhome. I and all the work that Mike had done to make the house um ready for sale. I absolutely wasn't going to stop that ready for sale. I absolutely wasn't going to stop that. So I said the sale has to go on. I will figure out where I'm going. It's 2024 now. It's August of 2024. And it's taking me four years to get to this place. I'm not whole yet. I'm still figuring out who I am, but I'm in a different place than I was four years ago and I want to share how I navigated this loss and how I navigated my grief.

Speaker 1:

Because, as a society, we don't talk about grief and loss, and we need to. We really should be talking about this, because the only way to be less afraid of grief and loss is to bring these tough conversations out of the darkness and into the light. We have to face them. Talking about grief makes it less scary. It doesn't mean it's not scary. It doesn't mean it's not the most terrifying thing you'll ever go through when you lose a spouse. It doesn't mean it's not the most terrifying thing you'll ever go through when you lose a spouse.

Speaker 1:

But we don't talk about grief and how it affects us, and we don't talk about it enough. We're starting to. The conversations are out there and we are starting a little bit, but we need to have these conversations so that it's not scary to people to talk about it, because everyone is going to go through a loss in their life and it's important because I've seen so many people stuck in their grief that they can't function and if we talk about it, it will become easier to hear, it will become easier to hear, it will become easier to carry, and I'm hoping that if, by sharing how I've navigated through some of these things, that's why I wanted to share this, to start this podcast, I want to share my story, how I've navigated through things, and my hope is that my journey will help someone, and I want to hear your stories of how you've navigated through your grief. Right, maybe it will help someone out there as well who's just starting on their journey.

Speaker 1:

And let me just tell you it is absolutely a journey. There's no end. It's a journey and we can help each other by sharing our stories and doing it in an open, loving way, where there's no judgment. There is. There's just, there's no judgment. It's absolutely a safe place, a safe space, and that's what I want your friend in grief to be a safe space to talk about these things, to have these discussions and to really start listening to people and having these conversations together. You can find us on Instagram, at your friend in grief, and on Facebook, your friend in grief, please feel free to leave me a message. And on Facebook, your Friend in Grief, please feel free to leave me a message, send me a DM, tell me your story. I would love to hear how everybody is navigating their own journeys, as I share how I've navigated through mine. So I want to thank you for listening and joining today and I hope that you find this helpful and we'll talk soon. Thank you.