Loop

How do you go about wrapping your head around tragedy? How do you get past a point of mere acceptance with the stark knowledge of an altered reality and find yourself at peace? What does that process look like? Because I’d give you just about anything for that road map right now.

My mental days seem to be on a loop. It starts with disbelief mingled with denial which then leads into succumbing to knowledge that cannot be ignored which then kicks off the overwhelming grief and all of the gruesome images that come along with it, which eventually fades to numbness. Then somewhere along the line, I manage to forget for a handful of moments this horrific event and find myself absorbed back into the everyday routine; laughing along the way with friends or my children, cruising the aisles at the grocery store. Then suddenly, I will see something or say something in a very specific way and the loop starts all over again. Little sucker punches all day long.

I had a teacher tell me once in reference to grief that “all things are possible with soft belly.” When he said it, I had absolutely no idea what the hell he was talking about. Now I think I have an idea. When the loop starts I can feel the very core of my being stiffen. Harden against the acute knowledge that my dear friend and her girls are gone forever. But there are singular, fleeting moments when I can sense there is peace beneath the pain. Because I know Laurel, Hannah, Zoe and Lucy are at peace, and they are ready and willing to teach me how to embrace my own peace, I just have to soften enough to let it in.

Of course, softening also means letting the pain in. The smothering grief that comes in the face of simple acknowledgement. I always thought I’d have to be strong enough to weather this kind of grief, but it is turning out, I think, that I have to be soft, pliable, operating from the heart of grace to see the other side of this. I have to allow myself to melt into this grief, allow it to saturate my very being. Then, perhaps, I can breathe in the beauty of their lives and breathe out the beauty of my own.