Well let me get all the obvious stuff out of the way. I have not posted in a very long time. As mentioned in my last post, I’m not perfect. The short version…my mom got diagnosed with cancer and I spent all my free time with her. After about 8 months of fighting it, she passed away. So all my time for awhile after that was spent grieving, trying to navigate my way in a world that no longer had my mother in it. And then so much time passed it felt weird trying to jump back in here and explain it all, so I kept putting it off. And the more I put it off, the harder it got to come back. Like I said, I’m not perfect.
Grief is an entity all unto itself. You think you’re past the worst of it, and then you wake up on a day like today. Nothing is wrong and yet everything is wrong. The sun is shining and life is good but you just feel that emptiness inside. Grief feels so lonely, but it’s meant to be shared. That’s how you get through it. See, I woke up this morning in a crap mood. There was no reason for it, I don’t recall having any bad dreams, I got a decent amount of sleep. But all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and avoid the world. Instead, I got up, got dressed, went to work, and realized I needed to share this.
I remember the morning I found out my mother was going to die. Bright and early, Monday morning, being woken in a rush and telling me the doctor called and said we needed to rush over there if we wanted to say goodbye. I had just left her hours earlier. I thought I had months, not days, not hours. I remember jumping out of bed, thinking, "Nothing is ever going to be the same again." I remember the cold ice that ran down my body, rooting me to the spot. And still, I made my bed, like I had every morning for years, because at least I could feel that one thing was the same. When I came home a day-and-a-half later, minus one parent, all I wanted to do was to crawl under the covers and hide from this new world I was in. But the bed was made, reminding me that not everything had changed.
Grief is like you're stuck in a single moment while the world continues to turn. It's like an earthquake that has shifted the ground under your feet but your mind hasn't caught up with the fact you are now walking a different path. Grief is pain at its most rawest form, crushing down on every part of you until you are a mangled and twisted heap in the junkyard of life. And you just want to reach out, hoping someone can pull you out and put you back together. But the person you want to do that for you is the person you can no longer hold.
Someone told me they heard a quote that stuck with them. "You are the most present absence in my life." No truer words have been spoken. I think about my mother every day, I feel the emptiness in the space she used to exist constantly, and there are brief seconds when I forget and think, "I need to call Mom and tell her about this." There is no coldness so profound as that because you know it's permanent.
I know it’s the holidays and this is a big part of why I’m feeling this now. I think I’ve been able to hold it all in for so long, but I’ve also recently opened up my heart again and have allowed myself to live, not just exist. Brene Brown says we can’t selectively numb the bad parts of life and still feel the good, but I think maybe I had been trying to do just that, thinking I was fully living when in reality I was still numb from the loss of my mom. But I want to feel the good again, and so I have to not crawl back into bed, I have to endure this crushing weight, I have to reach out into the void and realize that somewhere, someone is reaching back, and I will find my footing again.