Thursday, December 31, 2009

Feelings running amok

Grieving takes time. Grieving takes energy. Grieving takes courage.

I have been amazed at grief’s power to affect every part of my being... physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

In early grief, an extreme fatigue wraped around me like a blanket I could not throw off. Some days, I would crawl right back into bed after having just eaten breakfast.

Sleep doesn’t necessarily bring respite. The tears flow even then. And my loss seems even louder as evening comes and the quiet magnifies the emptiness.

The simplest chores take Herculean effort. The figures in my checkbook won’t balance. Familiar items disappear into thin air. Simply doing the dishes takes me hours to work up to. My words sputter and stop mid-sentence.

“Grief takes up a lot of space in my head,” I try to explain to friends. It’s the only way to depict how my brain wrestles with a reality so devastating that it seems incomprehensible... that my angel no longer breathes on this earth.

And my heart? Who knew it could break so many times and so sharply and into so many pieces? And that emotional pain creates a fatigue that surpasses my extreme physical exhaustion.

Contrary to popular myths, I don’t “get over” my grief in a week or two, after a month, or even as I go through this year of painful firsts.

But thanks to Hospice bereavement groups, the compassion of Christ, friends who’ve walked through loss ahead of me, and my new found family at CC, I’ve learned to live with grief, as best as I can. I slog through it, in fits and starts, in bewilderment and clarity, in sorrow and in grace.

It is a much longer, harder process than popular culture would have us believe. As a society, we’ve lost touch with the wisdom and rituals and reality of death that our ancestors understood.

It is hard work to heal. Personally, I won’t “get over” my loss. Why would I want to get over a love so sweet and maddening and dear? I am, however, learning to live with the loss, to move forward in my life, in what I call a “new normal.”

Gradually, very gradually, hopefully, over months and years, the gratitude for the life we shared takes up more space than the grief. The difficult truth is that the healing comes through the grieving, the respite after the tears. My laughter jumbles in with my sorrow. The same poignant memories that stab the heart with longing also hold the warm, soothing comfort that eventually flows.

And I’m let in on one of humankind’s deepest and, in this culture’s, often unspoken truths: facing death changes life forever.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

poemy type thingy

My heart cries out
In an otherwise silent room
My grief defines me

I call your name
Praying for a response
My grief a crushing boulder

The phone rings
I expect to hear your voice
My grief explodes

A Bible in my hands
Verses stand out
My grief ever present

A realization has come to me
It is not your comfort that I crave
My grief subsides

God is good
He hears my pleas
My grief ever a part of me

My heart still breaks
But in His hands
My grief no longer mine to bear

A humble servant
Finds her faith
My grief a map to His heart

A thankful child prostrate to Abba
Can fathom His joy
My grief a tool to shine His glory

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Please

Can it please, please, please, be Jan 2? I can't stop thinking about how much fun we would have around the holidays. Once again... this sucks