It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ~Colette
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I don’t wake up thinking, “Today is going to be one of those days.” I’m not even sure what sets it off, what sends me to look at the photos again, to read the old posts. Just like I could never leave a skinned knee alone to heal cleanly, I can’t seem to stop poking at this. I guess I just need to check to see how much it still hurts. This is one of those days.
I guess it’s because I have so little of it available. So few moments, so many of which were rushed and anxious and now are fading oh so quickly.
It’s not the debilitating, crushing agony anymore. I’ve managed to climb out of that deepest pit of despair. I can breathe through these moments now.
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. ~George Eliot
I don’t know when that happened; when I stopped fighting it, when it just became a part of who I am now.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. ~Robert Frost
So true, all of it. I was just emailing someone who had a recent loss, and I told her that I couldn’t say it would get better, but that after time she would grow more comfortable with the pain and grief. The “companion” quote above states it so much better than I did.
I’m sorry you are having one of those days though. You’re entitled to as many as may befall you, of course, but I hope tomorrow is a better one.
yes, I found that too– it’s more organic now, a part of me. But there are still days I’d rather not have any obligations, so that I can just sit there with the grief, full time. And I also (almost) never know where they come from, these days.
“But there are still days I’d rather not have any obligations, so that I can just sit there with the grief, full time.”
That’s the part that gets me. Where before, I just wanted the pain to stop, now there are times when it’s like I seek it out. I can spend an entire day bringing myself to tears over and over again. Have we become addicted to whatever endorphins accompany sadness? Is it the grief version of a runner’s high?
Those days, I KNOW that if I start looking at the pictures I won’t stop there. I’ll read the posts and the comments. I’ll seek out other blogs and draft posts that never get published. It’s this obsessive need to just get down in it and roll around until I’m covered with it.
And I thought “wallowing in grief” was just an expression. Who knew….
I’m sure it serves a purpose. Maybe just as you’ll eventually get used to a pebble in your shoe if you walk on it long enough, to the point of missing it when you finally remove it, if you feel the sadness over and over it just becomes a part of you that you are hardly aware of.
whatever it is….it trickles from, and resides in our hearts…like so much else in this grief process…. to be analyzed ever so gently…it comes from love i believe and therefore just is…
and so who we all are now……….wish i could hug you…
Oh honey, I am so sorry. I just ache for you.
I found that too… all of it. True true. It just… becomes a part of you.
I don’t think we ever stop picking at it, poking it… just to see if it still hurts. Because somedays it doesn’t hurt, and that upsets me too.
it’s always there, just under the surface. I’ve always thought of it as a deep scar — it was once open and raw but over time it’s been forced underneath the surface so that I only I can see and feel it now…
I’m not sure about companion; to me it’s more like an extra limb or something. But true: with me all the time, slung over my shoulder with my purse as I head out the door.
And I do that too. In fact just a couple days ago, for no reason whatsoever, I sat down on my bedroom floor and read the email I sent out announcing Maddy’s birth/death. For no reason. And some days I can’t believe that it’s me I’m reading about.