An Elephant Named Grief
I’ve been talking a lot about old stories from my life, but this one seems to be unwilling to become history as well. Just when I think I’ve mastered grief, and loss, and the depression has subsided, and I no longer hurt all the time, something random makes it come crashing back in. Thankfully, it’s nothing like it’s been the past few years, I can handle this.
Her death anniversary came and went, along with Easter, which are both usually emotionally triggering times for me, and I was fine, for once. I actually got on with life. Then my birthday came. I was planning a barbecue get together at my house like always, but I couldn’t get it together. Every night after work I was in the rigors of the stupid heaviness that is this grief.
I forced out tears, I watched movies that are known to make me cry, I even got in a fight with my husband just to make me cry. The tears flowed, but the pain didn’t go away. Now, here we are just a few days away from Mother’s Day, and I’m dragging myself through the motions of work, when all I want to do is cry, lay in my bed, and let the next week pass.
I have a lot that I’m excited about right now, I’m running, my garden is in full swing and looking fantastic, but I’m stuck with a rain cloud over my head. My sleep is heavy but not restful. By the end of the day I’m exhausted, hell, even by 3pm I’m exhausted.
Annie has a girl’s event planned for this weekend. She’s just gotten divorced, and has a few new friends in the same boat. They’re her little support circle, since they all understand. I understand the loss, but my loss is totally different than hers and theirs. They’re going to get together around a campfire, say prayers for their future successes, and burn things they need to let go of, or write it on plates and smash them. A lot of them are going to be burning lingerie from their failed marriages. Then they want to dance around the fire in their underwear as an expression of their feminine strength.
I want to go so badly, and not at all at the same time. Grief is a conflicting son of a bitch. I don’t know what I’d burn? My pin that says, “Cancer Sucks”? Yeah, that definitely needs to go. I wore it everyday while my mother’s brain cancer scrambled her brain and then took her from us.
I could buy a Father’s Day card and burn it. But that seems like old news. I’ve forgiven both of my fathers. Well, mostly. How much can you forgive a person for abandoning you as a baby and missing your whole entire life practically? Or, for being there your whole life, but moving on so abruptly after the love of his life died from cancer, and marrying someone else, moving to a new house, and being super busy with the new wife’s kids that he forgets about his other ones?
Sometimes I don’t think I even have the right to be mad about that last part. It is not for me to judge how someone copes with loss. He took care of my mother until the very end. He even changed her diapers. He willingly changed the diapers of the woman he promised to stay with forever. That’s true love. Either he grieved while she was alive, or he hasn’t yet at all. We all cope with loss differently.
I could also buy something to do with brothers and burn that since one of my brothers has determined that his only purpose in life is to be homeless and in constant search for smack and clean needles and before I finally had to push him away to save my own mental health, he tried to take everything I had just to keep him afloat in the vast waters of his addiction.
I don’t know if I’m going to go to the healing fire dance girl power party. I don’t know these girls. I just know Annie. She’s been one of my best friends since college. I don’t know if I want to cut open my chest and show these other women the darkest parts of my heart. They haven’t earned it. They haven’t been there in the trenches with me during my darkest hours. Also, they don’t know me, maybe they don’t want me to come for their open heart healing either.
The ritual sounds wonderfully healing, but I don’t trust them. I don’t even know them.
All I know is, an elephant named Grief is sitting on my chest again, and all I want to do is go for hikes, and garden until the elephant kindly walks away.
That, and I really miss my mom.
But… it doesn’t make it suck any less.
The pain comes in, I feel like I can’t breathe as deeply, my chest, shoulder and neck muscles constrict, and I stay like this until I can somehow force myself to cry.
I forced out tears, I watched movies that are known to make me cry, I even got in a fight with my husband just to make me cry. The tears flowed, but the pain didn’t go away. Now, here we are just a few days away from Mother’s Day, and I’m dragging myself through the motions of work, when all I want to do is cry, lay in my bed, and let the next week pass.
I have a lot that I’m excited about right now, I’m running, my garden is in full swing and looking fantastic, but I’m stuck with a rain cloud over my head. My sleep is heavy but not restful. By the end of the day I’m exhausted, hell, even by 3pm I’m exhausted.
Annie has a girl’s event planned for this weekend. She’s just gotten divorced, and has a few new friends in the same boat. They’re her little support circle, since they all understand. I understand the loss, but my loss is totally different than hers and theirs. They’re going to get together around a campfire, say prayers for their future successes, and burn things they need to let go of, or write it on plates and smash them. A lot of them are going to be burning lingerie from their failed marriages. Then they want to dance around the fire in their underwear as an expression of their feminine strength.
I want to go so badly, and not at all at the same time. Grief is a conflicting son of a bitch. I don’t know what I’d burn? My pin that says, “Cancer Sucks”? Yeah, that definitely needs to go. I wore it everyday while my mother’s brain cancer scrambled her brain and then took her from us.
I could buy a Father’s Day card and burn it. But that seems like old news. I’ve forgiven both of my fathers. Well, mostly. How much can you forgive a person for abandoning you as a baby and missing your whole entire life practically? Or, for being there your whole life, but moving on so abruptly after the love of his life died from cancer, and marrying someone else, moving to a new house, and being super busy with the new wife’s kids that he forgets about his other ones?
Sometimes I don’t think I even have the right to be mad about that last part. It is not for me to judge how someone copes with loss. He took care of my mother until the very end. He even changed her diapers. He willingly changed the diapers of the woman he promised to stay with forever. That’s true love. Either he grieved while she was alive, or he hasn’t yet at all. We all cope with loss differently.
I could also buy something to do with brothers and burn that since one of my brothers has determined that his only purpose in life is to be homeless and in constant search for smack and clean needles and before I finally had to push him away to save my own mental health, he tried to take everything I had just to keep him afloat in the vast waters of his addiction.
I don’t know if I’m going to go to the healing fire dance girl power party. I don’t know these girls. I just know Annie. She’s been one of my best friends since college. I don’t know if I want to cut open my chest and show these other women the darkest parts of my heart. They haven’t earned it. They haven’t been there in the trenches with me during my darkest hours. Also, they don’t know me, maybe they don’t want me to come for their open heart healing either.
The ritual sounds wonderfully healing, but I don’t trust them. I don’t even know them.
All I know is, an elephant named Grief is sitting on my chest again, and all I want to do is go for hikes, and garden until the elephant kindly walks away.
That, and I really miss my mom.
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