I don’t post as often as I write anymore. I have more drafts lately than published blogs. I say, “I’m good!” far more times than is true and I show up and laugh and converse even when I want to do anything but. I have come to realize that my grief makes some people uncomfortable. “She should be over it,” is the feeling I get, “She has to move on,” the unsaid judgment. I am moving forward even if people can’t see that. I am learning how to exist in a space that he doesn’t. I am trying, desperately at times, to find and savor joy even in fleeting moments, but I miss him. There aren’t words to do that ache justice. I miss James. And so I write about it, because that’s what I do, but that sense I have from the world, that “it’s been long enough, she has to stop this,” keeps me from hitting “publish.”
Just now, I was writing about my very ordinary day. My day that was as typical as they can be for mid-August. A day that started with sleeping in followed by lazily working on the crossword then moved to spending a few hours outside in the flower beds and time with my chickens. This evening the kids stopped by on the back end of their trip north (mainly to pick up their dog) and we shared a meal and some memories and some laughs and even their visit was as typical as they come. As they were leaving, I finished loading and started the dishwasher and after they left I moved laundry and turned on the TV, so ordinary, so routine, so banal.
And yet, somehow, today felt like anything but. This week has been the hardest in a while, starting with my birthday and including the thirtieth anniversary of my mom’s death. Throw in the fact that school is ramping up and in two very short weeks I’ll be back in the classroom, there’s been a lot to process and work through. But for all those things, I felt prepared, or at least armed. I knew spending my birthday alone was the best thing I could do for me. I knew I would not only think about last year, but for all the years and all the days and I would miss him terribly, but I would come out the other side. I knew Mom’s anniversary would also have an edge to it. Amplified by the loss of James, I knew to give it more berth than I have in recent years, to allow the weight of it to settle back in for a time. And while I knew that returning to school would have its own arsenal of landmines just waiting to go off, all the moments when I would expect a text or think to send one, or how it feels to return home to an empty porch chair, I am as prepared as I know how to be.
It was Mom’s anniversary, though, that reminded me that grief has no end date. There is never a day we “get over” our grief. There is never a time when we can say we are “done” with that phase of our life. There is never a time when the sorrow will be permanently shut off. Thinking about my mom and all the years since her death, I was reminded that the waves of sorrow never stop, they might soften, or come less often, but they never cease.
Even more, I was reminded that the waves don’t just come when we predict them. They don’t just show up on anniversaries or birthdays or other annual events. They show up in the midst of a conversation with the plumber. They come in the opening bars of a familiar song. The loss I feel for James rushes through me and stops me in my tracks as I start the burn pile, notice the length of the recently mowed lawn, or when I put my filthy work clothes in the washer. The grief took over me today on the porch, listening to the birds and the cicadas and Jeff’s tractor across the road. And the tears fell tonight in the kitchen, doing James’ parts of homemade pizza. He is everywhere but he is nowhere. Grief is manageable and predictable and it is overwhelming and catastrophic. Everywhere yet nowhere.
I find it hard to be around our friends because they fully possess that adjective; they are our friends. For all the ways they all try to not make that an issue, it just feels more apparent that something is different, someone is missing and that absence feels tangible and hard and cold. This life that I have is still so full of “we”. I wouldn’t want it any other way – knowing the only way I can hold onto him is in memories, I wouldn’t want to be away from those same memories, and yet. And yet. And. Yet. I have to find a way through. I. Singular. There is no “we” in this grief.
There is no “we” at all.
So forgive me for putting my feelings down and hitting “publish”. Forgive me if it seems too much, too long, too intense. Forgive me if the joy continues to be evasive, elusive, and fleeting. I know no other way but through and “through” has no end date. I will always be working through my grief. Thirty years from now, I will still be grieving his loss just like I do Mom’s. Hopefully most of the time the memories are attached to laughter and joy, but I know, from how much I still miss my mom, that sometimes those memories will knock me down, will take my breath and will give me pause. Because sometimes it’s joy that’s everywhere yet nowhere.
Blessed Little Things 