People don't like talking about grief. It's almost taboo. Sympathy ends long before grief and it seems many of us are left alone going on a journey that even we don't understand.
What does grief look like?
Sometimes it is sitting on the floor of your kitchen crying your eyes out. Sometimes it is happily remembering a moment long ago, a dream that they are still alive and sometimes it is not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. The burden of life after their deaths sometimes feels heavy, other time it feels like maybe it didn't happen. Like a life before you understood a loss so painful that even months later you cannot possibly wrap your brain around it.
We have ideas of what grief is supposed to look like, how it is supposed to act and the time frame it is supposed to be over. "They" say not to wallow but at the same time not to avoid your feelings. "They" say to keep yourself busy, but not too busy because you might be pushing away your pain. "They" say time heals all wounds. But how can you ever recover?
All I do know is that "they" are never clear and "they" never understand. Grief is chaotic and exhausting. It is complicated and unyielding. It comes unexpectedly, in the middle just when you started to feel like you had it together. When I think about how I initially gave myself 30 days to "get over it" it makes me laugh... we are going on 90 now and I have no idea how this process will go.
I wish people would stop telling me how to get over it. But what I wish the most is that people would stop pretending like it didn't happen. We often discount each others feelings. We don't want to hear about loss, like it is contagious or something. Maybe because we know that sooner or later we will suffer some kind of loss too and we cannot go there.
Grief is the price of love. What my heart feels now is proportionate to the 32 years we shared. The pain is the price of all those years of love. For all they gave me, for all they sacrificed for me, for raising and loving me... there are no words and no price too great to pay for the two people who loved me just like they were my parents.
My life is by no means terrible. I have a very beautiful and blessed life. It is a bittersweet walk of happiness and sorrow now... loving people who are no longer here with us. It is loves greatest transformation... love that outlasts death.
