Dear Grieving Person—
I still see you.
I know you’re still reeling.
It’s been awhile since your loss. A couple of weeks, or a
couple of months. Maybe even a couple of years. Grief moves along at a
different pace for everyone.
But the rest of the world moves on at a predictable pace. The
casseroles have stopped being delivered to your home. That overabundance of
flowers? They’re long wilted and gone, out with the trash. You’re not sure what
to do with all of the empty vases. People no longer look at you with those big,
puppy dog eyes, pity oozing out of their faces. In some ways, it’s a relief
that people are treating you somewhat normally now. In other ways, not so much.
Your boss is less and less forgiving when it comes to your less-than-optimal
work performance. Your friends and family, who at first were so patient, so
understanding, now sigh and withdraw when they notice that you look sad—again. Still.
See, everyone else’s world kept turning. Everyone else’s
lives are much as they were before your loss. And they all want you to go at
their pace, to move on in accordance with their timetable. They look at your
mopey countenance and they think, “How long is she going to stay like that?”
Non-grievers don’t get it. They don’t get that your world,
the world as you know it, has stopped, has stalled out on its axis. They don’t
get that there is a hole in your life where there once was someone or something
incredibly vibrant, meaningful. Something that was a part of you is gone from
you, forever. Your world doesn’t know how to spin, hasn’t learned how to keep
turning with a hole in it.
You have good days here and there. Maybe for you that means
getting through supper without crying or getting through the day without
listening to that voicemail that you can’t bring yourself to delete. Maybe it
means being able to go more than five minutes at a time between mental
snapshots of your lost beloved’s face, their smile, their laugh. Maybe on a
good day, you laugh a little, or find yourself so caught up in the present that
you forget to be sad.
But still, every morning when you wake up, it’s the same: a
few seconds of peaceful unawareness, and then you remember. Awareness comes
crashing in and pain descends over you like a pea-soup fog. Every morning is
still like that. Every morning, you remember your loss and feel it profoundly.
Some days, you shake it off, it doesn’t stay in your mind or keep your head on
the pillow. Other days, the pain is worse than ever, and you wonder how you’ll
ever bounce back from this.
Even though it’s been awhile now, sometimes your grief is
stronger than it was at the beginning, because the hole in your life is more palpable
now. You’re running into moments that are entirely alien. Something funny happens to you, and you want
to share it with your person….and then you realize that you can’t. Their name
pops up in your calendar, your gift list, your phone, social media, but they’re
not in your life anymore. Their chair at the table is vacant. A constant in
your life is missing. Your life is different, and though you’re working hard to
re-equilibrate, you haven’t yet found your new normal. And the finding of it is
exhausting.
The sharp pains of loss come upon you unexpectedly, like cat
burglars on a quiet street. They sneak up, steal your attention and your motivation. They steal your sparkle. Sometimes they steal your breath, knock the wind right out
of you. This is frustrating, because so many times, you’re unprepared, you can’t
see it coming. You wish you could see it coming. But then, a part of you is
glad that you can’t. A part of you is grateful for moments of blind optimism.
I still see you, griever.
You will find your way through this. A new normal is coming.
Someday, this will all be easier to carry. Someday.
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