Since being thrust into this grieving process, I have been interested in what those who have walked this path before me have discovered. Stephen Colbert spoke vulnerably about his loss. When Colbert, the youngest of eleven children, was ten years old, his father took two of his older brothers up to New England for boarding school. Their flight went down and all three perished. Four decades later, the loss is still with him, but it has changed:
"...it's not as keen. Well, it's not as present, how about that? It's just as keen but not
as present. But it will always accept the invitation. Grief will always accept
the invitation to appear. It's got plenty of time for you....
The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the
size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean?
I've always liked that phrase "He was visited by grief," because that's really what
it is. Grief is its own thing. It's not like it's in me and I'm going to deal with it.
It's a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it
will be like a wolf at your door."
I am being visited by grief. It's not a living part of me, but grief is here. It's pressing in, it is it's own size. It is it's own entity and it is with me.
Vicki Harrison, who was visited by grief when the man she loved was killed while riding his motorcycle, wrote:
"...it's really exhausting. I'm trying, still, to keep track of that one thing a day that makes me smile, is the best part, but even that's difficult right now. I think I did it for Monday and Tuesday, and I think I have one for today. But I am just so damn sad right now....
Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing.
Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming.
All we can do is learn to swim...."
I am learning that grief takes time. Sometimes, when I am in the midst of it, surrounded by it, I wish I could hurry it, fix it, comfort myself and make it go away....feel something else besides that pain in my chest, but grief takes time.
As the year has marched on grief has taken different forms in the changing seasons. As the temperature has dropped, the leaves have turned and December approaches I am surprised at how the memories that weren't as acute in the heat of July become sharp once again. Memories that were in the back of my mind are now in the forefront. I was driving in the car the other day and the memory of calling my Grandfather, my mom's dad, and telling him that she was gone played out scene by scene. About a month ago, I was helping my youngest daughter with her hair as she was getting ready for school. She said, "Mom, I've been thinking a lot about Grandma lately and I just feel sad." She told me that in her choir class at school they had started singing Christmas songs to prepare for the holiday performances and the first day all she could do was to keep breathing and not cry.
Last year at this time we had just returned from a family trip to Disneyland with my siblings and my mom. She was a trooper. She spent a week walking around several theme parks in Southern California with her kids and her grand-kids. Then she was off to South Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. None of us could guess as December came and we celebrated the holidays that it would be the last time. That she would not be with us to usher in the New Year.
Grief is, as Colbert says, a thing. Right now it is an acute thing. There has not been a day that I don't think about her, about that day, about how I am changed and how certain days are gone forever. Someday, I trust, that sifting through these memories will not be quite as painful as it is now.
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