I spent the day with grief today. It wasn’t planned, asked for, or wanted in any way. But, I spent the day with grief. It was last year at this time that it was already making itself known. That the likelihood of getting around this unwelcome visitor was not possible. I tried for a while to avoid this visitor at all costs. But the spend me, of giving myself up to unconsciousness and anti-consciousness was too high a price to pay to avoid something. Even something as unwanted and undesired as grief.
And so grief made it’s grand entrance late last summer. And not for a day trip or for a weekend visit. It moved in with me...for a while. So it seems I traded a roommate of a great love and, at the time, a perceived great failure for the roommate of grief. Grief was the kind of roommate who was in your face 24/7 taking up every ounce of oxygen in the apartment with little tiny moments of ease and hope. I’m not sure when the roommate of grief actually left, if it happened all at once, or one suticase at a time. It did seem to leave thought and take all of its luggage hence maybe for for some parting memories of its stay.
But then today it came back. And it came back with a goal and a mindset like it forgot to show me all the goodness that I lost. This last 9-12 months it had mostly been showing me what didn’t work, what I was saving myself from, what I had to choose differently from. You see, the pain of what wasn’t was okay that I grieved over these past months was excruciating, and at times, I thought it killed my spirit completely. But the pain of being with the goodness, of grieving and really being with this love, this great, great love of my life- that, that would have buried me alive.
So I buried it first before it could bury me. After four years of choosing from the kingdom of we and what felt like being fought against from the inside of our home, I chose me which in some bittersweet way was still choosing from the kingdom of we. I had to choose what I knew is possible. Where I know you can create from. And it nearly killed me to choose away from a man i loved full-out, full-on and full into my heart, energy, soul and future.
So I sat today with grief watching a movie of a million moments flashing through my mind of all the beauty, all the love, all the greatness we created. The movie I’ve done my best to not see this past year while I was surrounded by the outtakes that destroyed not only our happily ever after but the space between choice and creation. I also sit here painfully knowing what it could have with consistent and insistent nurturing, honoring, loyalty and respect.
Grief stuck with me today with the consistency and insistence that I begged for a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. And it ripped open every scar until I sat with it silently to let the salt tears traipse into the old wounds. I’ve heard salt water heals. We’ll see.
It did sent a note of its forthcoming arrival but I didn’t quite get it. A few days ago, in the midst of a lovely day, I was overcome with a fleeting but powerful lightning strike of awareness. The awareness of the impact my absence was/has been in my former Love’s life. I had been so unwilling to know that. To know what the final tearing apart of lives that were threaded together with so much desire, hope and love brought forth.
Grief made sure to send that package ahead to me, that unopened awareness I was finally ready to open. And, unbeknownst to me, it was also an announcement of its impending arrival.
So I spent the day with grief today at first trying to get rid of it, then trying to ignore it and then finally walking with it…and visiting with Rob the only way I can now… silently praying for both of us.