Process

Process, process, process. Seriously. Grief is such a process. And it pisses me off. Mostly because it’s entirely unpredictable. I have spent most of this week smack in the middle of this horrifically awful grief. It’s all I could do to make it through the days. Thankfully, the week has been full of friends and an overflowing to do list as it kept me moving and breathing.

Today is the first real day that I’ve been able to engage a bit with the world around me. Laugh without feeling guilty. Listen to music without it making me want to go catatonic. Get excited about cooking something for my family. Planning on starting baking bread again next week. Basically wake up and look at my day with a sense of curiosity instead of dread.

After my Dad died, a friend of mine, who had lost her Mom to cancer the year before, told me that there would be days where it felt like I had been punched in the stomach for no good reason. And she was right. And she’s being proved right again with this one. The ebb and flow of the grief process feels more like knowing that I will randomly be beaten severely on those days when I think that I’ve finally healed from the last beating.

I think the trick really is to not let myself grow to be afraid of those beatings. I know they’re coming. I know they’re going to suck. But I think I can also know that I can survive these beatings and that possibly they will lessen with time. I think if I get so wrapped up in the anticipation of the inevitable pain that I can’t see past that fear, that there won’t be a process anymore. There will only be fear. And that fear will be entirely of my own creation. And surely, I have much better things to create than fear?

Fresh

Loss. It’s a funny thing. And by funny, I mean the interesting, kick your ass kind.

In March, I lost my Dad to cancer. And eight days ago, I lost one of my dearest friends and her three daughters to a tragic accident. After both incidents of loss, I spent the first couple of days basically numb. There were moments of realization that elbowed their way through the numbness. It’s amazing how you can feel so completely numb and still only have the horror and the grief less than a thought away.

There are also moments of utter disbelief. This cannot possibly be happening. My Dad simply cannot have died at the young age of 64. My sweet friend and her sweeter daughters cannot possibly be gone forever. I can still hear their voices in my head. I still think about calling them like they are only a phone call away. I still thought about what to bring them back from a recent vacation. Is that habit or denial? Probably both.

As I sat, today, in the memorial service for Laurel, Hannah, Zoe and Lucy, the idea for this blog came to me. As I sat there thinking, “Jesus, how am I ever going to get through this, how am I ever going to stop crying?” I thought, it’s time to write it out. It’s time to allow the memory of my Dad and my dear friends to live through my process of grief and loss. It’s time to go to work, again.

So here I am, typing slowly at my laptop, tears filling my eyes to the point where I cannot see the screen, trusting that my fingers will take me through this. Trusting that my Dad, Laurel, Hannah, Zoe and Lucy will see me through this. That they will continue to hold my hand now like they did so many times before. And that through this immense loss, I will emerge the other side stronger, more full of love and light and with a greater ability to live and inhabit each moment as it arrives and then passes.