Prologue: I joined an online support group (at GriefNet) for widows and widowers shortly after Mette died. One day I tried to explain to another group member how unexpected little things could trigger a "grief attack" and related this story:

QUOTE
let me try to explain: my wife planted a rose bush near the front door..
she loved it, and so do i..
she died in January and one day the following spring I walked 
out on the way to go somewhere and BLAM, there it was in bloom...
all of a sudden, unexpected..
those yellow blooms, for the first micro-second brought a burst of
the JOY of spring and just as quickly brought the reality of the 
blackness of knowing that my love would not smell them with me..
END QUOTE

The next day's mail brought this poem written a year earlier by a group member:

Lying in Wait

	I've had this flower 7 years upon my garden wall no matter how I've fussed and fumed it's never bloomed at all I've watered it and worked with it I've tendered it with care Fertilized and babied it but it was always bare Abundance of leaves, hardy plant, robust health and verdant green, called the experts, took advice but not a flower to be seen I gave it everything they said All love and food supplied But why this year did it burst forth four months after you had died? Could it be there never was a need for any bloom until your life had left my own and my Bleeding Heart filled the room? Written for Paul by his Annie, June 3, 2001

By the way, if you are reading this and hurting alone, I suggest you join the kind and gentle folks at www.GriefNet.org--I just can't say enough good things about how helpful the place has been for me.