What Grief Looks Like, Today...

It is amorphous.  It is ever changing.  This last week grief has kicked my ass into napping and early bedtimes, and then yesterday it launched me into a cleaning, handling, productive frenzy.  I have no delusions that whether I am rendered comatose or manically energized, it is all grief’s current manifestation in my body, mind and soul.

I break into tears without warning or cause.  It just hits me like a tidal wave, and then again, sometimes, it is just an easy tide, lapping at my shores.  But I can feel it with every breath, all day, every day.

My first thought upon awakening the last three days has been, “my dad is dead.”  It is still somewhat surreal.  Like there is this part of me that believes he exists still on this plane.  That he is not wandering the Bardo until he moves into whatever comes next.  Like he is still here, but I know he is not.  I saw him dying and I saw him dead.  There is a very large difference between the two.  I know, absolutely, because I was there.

I am ok with grief looking different with each moment that passes.  It somehow, seems fitting that I am unmoored and upended.  I mean, who would I be if I were not?  I have no need to compartmentalize his passing into “appropriate times or spaces.  I have no timeline for this grief.  I trust that I have become a container that can hold it when it is a raging sea as much as I can hold it when it is a minuscule tide.  I have become a vessel that is capable of riding each wave as it comes, I am grief seaworthy so it seems.

I am so very grateful I got 56 years with him.  That we had so many good, fun times together. They totally overshadow and hollow out the hard times.  For the most part, our hard times lived within our addictions and recovery healed most of the hard charge I felt towards my dad. Without recovery, for each of us, I am sure we would have been lost to each other a long time ago.

But we were not.  And I am happy for the times we spent and I am honored that just now, the remembering of the good times, cut into me so deeply that tears are streaming down my face currently.  This is grief.  It is like water, and creates its own path through your life.  And as so many of us in SoCal have recently learned, again, still, water does exactly what it wants and takes whatever stands in its demanding path.  I have no more power over grief than I do addiction, or death or a rising wave.  I cannot stem the tide and so I shall not attempt to stem the rising swell of grief that roils in my soul.  I shall just accept each moment as it comes, doing my best to appreciate each wave contains its own lesson.  And my only task, this living task, is just to glean what I can from each one and move forward in a way that makes what I learn and know accessible to others, if they are so inclined.

And now, the tears have ceased and I write on.  A momentary blip on my Saturday morning.  I know they shall return once more, maybe in five minutes, perhaps in five hours, it matters not at all.  They will come again, and I will be grateful for the release.

All this crying has given me a new sense of gratitude (and now the tears flow again - I guess it was more like 5 seconds, oh well) for the ability to cry.  I had loads of things to cry about decades ago but could not shed one tear.  Not a single fucking tear.  Ever.  Not for you, not for me, not for anyone.  I just felt angry and rageful.  That is all I had.  And in this most recent engagement with grief, I don’t feel pissed at all.  I mean, that may come and it is ok if it does, but right now, I just am allowing the pain to be here and to be present and have no intention to try to chase it away or hurl it fonward (fucking onward for those of you who don’t know that I make up words as I go ).

What grief looks like today is me living and breathing and crying and doing and sorting and planning and cleaning and sitting with it.  Last night, the cats and I had a fire and grief joined us.  It occupied a chair in my living room much the way my father might have if he could still perform such basic tasks as sitting in a fireside chair.  I saw grief enter and I didn’t look away, I gave it a nod and went back to petting my cats.  I am not sure how long grief stayed, but I felt its presence when I went to bed, and if I didn’t know better, I could swear I felt grief pull my covers round as I climbed into bed, my back hurting from all my work yesterday, emotionally spent and drained.  I swear I felt grief pull my covers up as I drifted off, I think I may have even mumbled thank you...and I swear I think I heard grief sniffle as it left...so rarely being thanked for the acute sadness which is grief’s constant and often unwelcome travel companion.

I thank grief today. That is who I have grown into.  This is the woman I have become.  I know I have been here all along, but I am currently experiencing myself as I never have before.  Grief is doing that.  And I am, and remain, forever thankful for the lesson...

Again, still...