I wrote this experience down a few months ago, after reliving a similar scene nearly every day. As time has passed day in and day out, I feel I am becoming more equipped to handle the waves of grief. The sorrow of my dear Jared's passing still comes just as strong each day, but the strength of hope and peace have become stronger too, and I'm feeling more comfortable flexing their muscles regularly. Still, the nearly upon us season of turkey legs and figgy pudding seems to be threatening my abilities to calm the triggers that show up unannounced. Grief is a roller coaster with stomach turning emotions waiting after each hill I've climbed. Highs and lows, joys and sadness, each equally great and surprising.
So I share this not because I want to expose what some may consider weakness. And certainly not to gain pitty or worry. I share simply because it's real. Despite the fact that reality is a place I mentally avoid often, it is where I live. I want to express that grief is not a weakness, or someplace you simply pass on through to occasionally look back on. The grief over the passing of a loved one, and more specifically the passing of a husband whom your whole life and happiness is wrapped up in, is at it's most basic genetics the mirrored emotion of love. I've come to expect the rolling swells in the sea of grief to be high and deep as a reflection of my great love for Jared.
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o'reflow,
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress."
While I feel sorrow, I feel love more. I feel it coursing through me with each tear that falls and each heart string that pulls. I feel love for Jared and love from Jared. Still more importantly, I feel love from God, a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. I believe through faith in God and Jesus Christ, from whence all love flows, my grief, born of love but now winding through sorrow and heartache, will evolve back into that great love from where it began.
"Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith... It is the price of love."
Author Unknown
The water pours over me, running onto my head and catching
in my eyelashes. It washes over my body as I kneel on the shower floor,
dripping off my nose and chin. It streams down perfectly disguising my tears as
they roll along side the hot water and over the contours of my face, the tears
finding their way swirling around the drain and in my mind making their way to
the ocean to mingle with drops of its their own kind, salty and blurry.
I hug myself, arms wrapped around me steadying, and
striving, struggling to feel, to remember what it was like to be hugged so
tightly, tight enough to believe nothing was wrong in the world. I’m straining
to hear something, my husband’s voice, even just a whisper of my name.
How long has it been? One minute, two minutes, ten minutes.
I don’t hear anything. No sound. Nothing.
And I cry, weeping for all the hopes and dreams that no
longer exist. I feel grief washing over me as if I were in a pit of dark mud
clinging to my skin. I look up and see there is an opening, but no matter how I
strain and exert myself I can’t seem to grasp anything or find a foothold. I
fall back down to the cold, damp ground.
On the outside, I smile. I chat. I technically function. But
on the inside, I stand looking up from this pit of sorrow and I reach. Reaching,
the strain of it wears on me.
How long have I been sitting on the floor of the shower? How
wrinkled can skin become before it’s irreversible? Although pruned skin never
bothered me before, I can’t leave Libby with Grandpa forever. She needs me. So
I stand and rinse and get out. Once again, it is my daughter that makes me get
up. She reaches to me and pulls me out of the deep well of grief. I also need
her.
