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?