The shattering and sitting within the pain IS revolutionary that Glennon speaks of and the only thing that makes any semblance of sense when nothing else does. I remember a dear friend asking my mother how she was coping after the loss of her son and her reply was that she had cleaned every closet in her house.
This common need to create order out of that which feels so horribly and painfully chaotic often occurs for those of us in grief. There just has to be something that can be held and seen as started and finished. Grief and loss are not this, they are hot, messy, primal and they do not follow a neat and tidy linear path no matter how hard one tries to make them.
I felt cracked wide open, raw, everything hurt, my insides were not even thinly covered and I was wearing them on the outside. It was as if I was skinless and what little I did possess was tender, porous, full of holes, and whatever life force energy that still lived within me could not be contained when I was out in the world. It was a time in which the only thing I knew I must do was to create a safe cocoon where I could retreat to. A time line didn’t exist, I didn’t know how or when I might emerge from it, and I simply needed to BE within it, feeling the swishing and swirling of every emotion that asked to enter. That is all I did know. Maybe when I emerged I might notice that I had grown some skin which would help me to live as this new being out in the world without my son. How could I explain who I was when I had no clue and didn’t even have language for it yet?
Grief will wait for those who jump right back into life as it “was” because that is their survival tool. Yet, one day grief will become impatient and it will demand the time and attention that it requires and needs. It will move from being strapped into the child’s seat in the back of the car to being front row and center in the driver’s seat.
I simply cannot fit back into my life as it was when my son was in his physical body, yet who am I now? This becomes my ongoing question and path that I travel today. Sometimes I’m barely inching along, other times I may feel some pockets full of peace, yet a Douglas size hole in my heart will forever remain. It cannot be filled with activities, material possessions or with running away from it. Once I learned to sit within it and ask what it wanted and needed from me, the gapping hole slowly began to feel sutured up with memories of Douglas' life, my ongoing relationship with my son as it is now and most of all the love that we share which will forever be ours.
What I discovered in my early walk with grief was the loudest voice in the crowd and the one who expected me to fit back into my former skin was me. I could place the blame out there, it was the others, yet, the truth of it is, it had been me all along.
This became a significant corner to turn that I can still look over my shoulder and remember, yet over time its sharp edges have slowly softened. My time and energy are spent living into this life that is mine. Is it the one that I had envisioned or would have chosen? No, yet it is the only one I have. I recall the story of our lives being lined up like paper bags along a long road and would we dare to pick up and have the courage to select a different bag or would we rather try to work with what’s inside of ours?
Comentários