There is an invisible side to grief that I think a lot of people don’t realize. A complicated, tightrope walk that is happening beneath the facade of those making their way through their personal journey with loss. It might be easy to nod and say, of course there is this layer, it makes sense that healing is a process and a that there will be ups and downs, but the reality of the rollercoaster is far more complex, far more tenuous than might be imagined.

Today, the owl house got hung. The owls are what James and I thought might remind me of him; we thought they might be something that might provide me with a sense that he was still here in some way, a comfort from nature. Having an owl house that he built and gave to me only solidified that concept and made the hanging of it carry far more weight than just providing a habitat for some amazing raptors. After a lot of research, I had decided to place the house in a tree that overlooks the pasture. An ideal spot for barred owls where they prefer to look east, out over a clearing of some sort with easy entry into their homes, but far more than that, it felt symbolic, a way to imagine James himself looking out over his beloved pasture with the morning sun warming his face.

The arborist I had hired through the recommendations of colleagues could not have been better suited for the task. While this was the first owl house he had hung, he was as excited and eager for the project as I was, and handled the entire event as far more than a professional task to be accomplished, but with a gentleness of spirit that acknowledged all that it meant to me. We weren’t sure how it was going to go, there were unknowns and challenges that we anticipated, but it went up perfectly and without a single hitch. At least not a hitch that anyone else might have felt or experienced.

For me, the entire process, from the start of my quest to get it hung to standing back and admiring the success of the house up in the tree, had not only a weight to the task, but it was an emotional dam being held back by extremely tenuous threads. But there were things to be done and people around and so, like most times, that journey through those emotions has to wait, has to be pushed back and dealt with at some other time. The appearance to the world is that this was fine, this was maybe not easy but that it wasn’t debilitating.

My to do list carried me from the edge of the pasture to the garden to water, where the first ripe strawberry of the season awaited me. Fellow gardners can relate, each “first” each season brings a delight to the senses that reminds you why you work so hard in the dirt to begin with. I have been hauling water for weeks now, and so the berry wasn’t just the normal celebration of another bounty headed my way, but was tangible evidence that I was being successful, in some small way, even if I wasn’t doing it James’ way, even if Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating, I was doing it. But I didn’t even pick the berry, I let it stay on the plant for another day, as I wasn’t quite ready to step through all the emotions that signified to me.

From the garden, I headed out to solve a tractor issue. A loaded quest for sure, taking me far out of my normal realm of tasks this time, I had the deeply appreciated patience of a man at the tractor dealer who explained everything to me as though he could visibly see my emotional dam about to break. With my current issue solved and future concerns allieviated, I left the store feeling successful and proud, but the moment I saw down in the driver’s seat, the emotional dam burst and I cried and cried.

For me, these emotions are always and I mean always right under the surface. I know that will lessen and soften with time, but this road I am on makes every single step feel like I’m walking in a minefield. For the sake of the world, I try to hold it together, keep those emotions at bay, appear normal even, but it’s exhausting and it’s constant and the weight of all of that brings me to my knees behind closed doors – even just car doors – more times that anyone might imagine.

So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when later in the afternoon, an argument erupted. An argument that I had been trying to navigate around, trying to escape, trying to diffuse but without success. There is too much bottled up to survive the last straw. There is too much to explain to make it make sense to anyone else- in fact just the fact that I have to explain it at all makes his absence grow. He would understand what I feel and what I mean and what I need.

I am surrounded by people who love me and care about me – people who are also grieving his loss. But I do not think even they understand this journey. People want to help, they want to support, they want to be there for me, but they can’t understand all the triggers, they can’t understand the weight of those triggers or the fear that I will publically lose my shit, or the desire to not release the dam of emotion in harmful or damaging or unintentional ways. They can’t understand how much I have to do on my own to prove to myself that I can. They don’t understand. This journey is a solo one. No matter how close my support network is, each one of us walks this path alone.

I don’t share any of this for pity or even in apology to those I hurt with my words today. I just mean to share a side of grief that is unseen, unfelt, unknown to those outside this path. Learning to manage these emotions isn’t something I do for my own well-being, it’s for the people around me. I know I have to let the emotions out, I have to process, I have to work through and not around, but I cannot do that in the presence of others. I cannot explain, I cannot make anyone understand, I cannot scare the general public with the strength and fury of these things inside me. I am angry. I am in pain. I am so very broken but I have to be strong, I have to stand up and move one foot in front of the other, I have to carry on even -and often- when I do not want to carry on at all. The world may well recognize that I’m not walking through a field of daisies right now, but I do not know that it can feel the tremors of the landmines, either. It does not know how scary it is to set each foot down. People cannot see how tightly my teeth are clenched or how hard it is to stand still and smile when you know you’re standing right on top of an explosive trigger.

I do not know if owls will ever reside in the house he built for me. It’s too late this year, and there are so many other creatures that may wish to call it home for a season. I hope some day they do, but it is enough, today, to know that James and I together have provided a place for such magnificent bird to call home. In this new world without him, he and I still did that together today. And the strawberries we planted together continue to flourish. And the tractor he loved continues to bless me with all it can do around here. We are still in this together, he is still helping me move forward. There is joy in all of that, for sure. But it is not without deep, unabating pain right now. Every single thing is filled with his absence. Including, and especially, me.