All in Grief
I spent my morning taking care of a mouse.
Not one of those house trained, loves people, pet ones. No, I am pretty sure this little thing was minding its own business in the great outdoors when it unknowingly ran into our cat Roo judging by the lack of full body movement.
This year I celebrated my birthday a little different than any other year. This year I gathered my family and friends to celebrate and finally publicly share a (mostly kept) secret project that I had been working on since January.
Rich and I were gifted two very different children. I used to hate this. It has made me cry and feel completely at a loss sometimes as we navigated the road to do what “was best” or “would work” for two boys who function in completely opposite ways but over the last few years I have grown to appreciate their uniqueness.
Actually, that is the wrong word. I don’t just appreciate it, I have come to celebrate it. I love that our boys are their own people. But it has taken a lot to get there.
Lately I have been feeling more and more like I am healing into a whole person again. Not the same girl who entered the darkness, but one who has seen the terrors that go bump in the night and has emerged with wider eyes and a greater understanding of human suffering. And God. I have learned a few things about Him and His goodness, too, as I have leaned into Him more and more.
My sea legs are almost gone and while I stumble through fewer and fewer moments of complete anguish, I have found one constant, nagging, companion. The urge to want to still include my brother in conversations about my present life.
Do you want to know something unfair? Something I have truly come to detest these days? How easy it is to hurt the ones you love when you are forced down the road of grief… unwillingly… by life… kicking and screaming (and probably with some gnashing of teeth).
My countenance was sullen that day. I had spent the weekend trekking through a familiar place that held many fantastical memories and overwhelming feelings of safety for being home for over a decade, all of which were dulled by the glaring absence of my brother who had been gone now for six months. There was no going back to normal or popping in for spontaneous visits anymore. Everything would now need to be planned to a “t” accounting for any emotional sustaining measures needed to “get through” being “there” again. Grief took this from me too, it just kept taking it seemed.
That Sunday morning was no different. I sat in the back of the church that I had grown up in, that I met Jesus in, that I went to bible college in, that I met my husband in, that I got married in, that we pastored in… and that we said our goodbye’s to my brother in. It was my first time back since that day and while I still had thousands of memories that I could pull on to put a smile on my face, the only one that I wanted to forget was the one that wouldn’t leave me.
Your life looks completely different now. Who knew that one person could change the entire world with their absence – but it has. For you. And I am so incredibly sorry for your pain.
After a few months (sometimes even a few weeks or days) the texts and phone calls stop. Friends and coworkers continue with conversations as “business as usual”, because they don’t know how to help or what to say. The gift of normalcy is offered so quickly but it offers no relief. Because nothing is normal anymore. They try, people genuinely care and want to “fix” it but there is no “fixing” this because they didn’t break you to begin with. Life did. Death did. And although everything changed in the blink of an eye, it will take months and years to navigate back to something resembling life before this dreadful news.
We sat down to eat and my brother’s brightly colored plaid socks peaked out from under his dress pants as if to say a cheery “hello”.
It was my father’s birthday and my siblings, mother, and I had surprised my dad by all meeting near where my brother worked so as to have one last family picnic before my parent’s big move to the Central Coast.
John had just started working for the Federal Defender’s Court in Sacramento and couldn’t stray too far from the office building as parking and time away for lunch was limited. When I was first planning the last minute get together, he told me to just get the girls together with my mom and dad without him because there were too many complicated factors, but I was adamant that he come.
On Monday, May 20th while staying with my brother for the one night that he was awake and able to speak, he didn’t ask a million questions, in fact he didn’t want to talk hardly at all. (He should have been sleeping but he didn’t do that either.) Instead, John asked to listen to music. Not that I blamed him. My family never left his side, which meant that he had been talked to for hours upon hours on end with no relief.
Conversations are tricky these days. Not that the words are tricky or that people are tricky… ok, maybe sometimes people are tricky… but emotions, those are the trickiest. At any given moment death is at the forefront of my mind. The loss of every moment that passes that my brother will never get to hear about. Every birthday that he will never know me “this old” as. Every funny story that he will never have the chance to laugh at. It is perpetually in front of me and while I can go whole days without crying (I have had a handful of those), more times than not those tricky tears leak out at the most inopportune time.
To anyone who has a loved one that has lost someone, I want to share a few ways that you can help… even though when you ask they will say “nothing”… because they either are overwhelmed with how much there is to do and can’t pin point one thing, or they don’t want to feel like an inconvenience. Either way, I have asked some friends whom have recently lost family members and we have come up with a short list of thirteen great ways that you can prove that love is an action word!
When is the last time you bought a car? My husband recently purchased one for me that was a beauty and the oddest thing happened (and no it wasn’t that it may or may not have been totaled within the first month - I’m okay, I’m okay, everything is okay): I saw that same car everywhere. It is like all of a sudden the Toyota Corollas were all waving back to me in solidarity like I had just joined a club that I never knew existed until I was knee deep in it.
I understand that this title seems contradictory... possibly phony... or maybe coming from someone who is not processing their actual feelings about death... but I beg of you to give me a chance to explain.
Because I have a story to share with you. Actually a few stories. They are painful and intense, so if you are at all squeamish you may want to pass on this one (although I am pleading that you don't).
It happened one evening while driving along the coastline late at night that I, as I often do, pointed to the vast expanse of water and instructed my boys to "look at the ocean"! I want them to look at it as often as possible to both be grateful for the incredible place that God has allowed us to live in, and be reminded of how big our God really is. To see the beauty of what He merely spoke into existence and let the breathtaking views wash over whatever small anxieties we may be facing.
Except this time... this time it was the middle of the night and there was no telling the end of the ocean from the beginning of the sky. Everything was dark.
