I have seen number of posts, and articles by parents that have lost a child, so really articles on grief. All of them written shortly after the loss. The feelings are deep and so poignant, and at that time, the compassion flowing in is abounding and the whole world is revolving around the loss, every breathe, every thought, everything that you see and that you do is surrounded by it, And it feels like the world should stop. it weaves itself into every heartbeat on a very conscious level.
The weaving, that is where it starts to get difficult. It is in every moment that used to be "normal" changing the perception, and the response to those moments. A wedding, can be wrapped in both deep sorrow and sweet joy as you put the pictures of the newly married couple on the wall, next to the picture of your child that is now timeless. Children growing up, taking normal risks, needing to leap, those can hold undercurrents of the final leap and breath you watched your child take. The essence of life is now permanently changed. While your loving friends and family wonder when you will " move on" or be your old self again………….. It is important to note that the old self is now gone. The innocence is lost. You can never have it back again, never live in the place without the loss. Others can only dream about what it might feel like and how it would affect their life, but at the end of the dream they get to wake up to their child's laughter, their innocence intact. But for those of us carrying this loss, we never get to wake up.
Yes, we still laugh and we still love and we still find meaning in small things, but behind it all lies a curtain of sorrow, that for the most part stays closed to the rest of the world. IT is understood and expected after the loss for tears to fall, for you to not be okay, while, but there comes a time in this unknown, uncharted, unmapped journey that you feel as though you really should be okay and you try to be and people may even think that you are, but underneath it all is the pictures and the feelings of watching one of the people that you have loved most in this world suffer, sometimes it feels like endlessly, over and over again and then become still. There is no idea, thought of rational understanding about this that can remove what you have seen. Suppressing it in favor other things to help you forget and feel blessed are at best a diversion, at most terribly hurtful.
And, when you feel the same kind of love in other parts of your life you become protective, kind of instinctively. You want to hold those people and never let them go. You want to freeze time and you want to remember and stay in the laughter and the magical moments that you remember, not just for the child that you have lost, but for all of them. And when life starts hurting the rest of those that you love, sometimes it becomes more than you can hold. The problem is that when time has passed and maybe now it has been years, you don't always know why….. Why when you sit with the others and talk and laugh and listen honestly to their heartaches, to the ups and downs of life, why when you leave you want to cry, why the pain sometimes feels unbearable. The memory of the source has dimmed, but the pain itself is still weaving itself through everything.
So sometimes unravelling the emotion has to be there first order of the day or nothing else can find a place past the first check mark on the list. The day can slip away as though in a fog and you can see nothing clearly. Stopping for the conscious recognition of the the fact that you are still breathing and still loving and no matter how far we get from the moment of the good-bye, it is still woven through every breath you have taken since then. It has created a picture that must be respected and honored. It must be heard, if you are going to live. When the day is swirling and you can't see where to start on the endless list of chores, work, study, even beautiful things, it is calling for you to stop and give it a moment maybe just gaze deeply at the picture that has woven itself and is creating your new life. It is okay even if time has passed to be okay and not okay, still, maybe even forever. You never stop loving and you will never forget. I think it is okay for life to never be able to look like it did before. It is okay to navigate new and complex ways of loving after the loss. It is okay to redefine yourself in a new way holding who you used to be wrapped securely in the knowing that love and loss has changed you forever.
So today wherever you are in the loss. Know, that it is not going anywhere. It will walk with you from room to room and color your world like a pair of rose colored glasses, only not always feeling rosy. In all of this, knowing that the tapestry woven through this story is unique and personal and is creating you.
Don't worry about being who you were ever again. That is an impossibility. You will and are becoming braver, brighter, more beautiful. That is the story that love always tells. You see, if there was no love, there would be no grief.
