I move around the house like a ghost sometimes, and other times like a contestant on Survivor. Can I outplay and outlast my ownself? I guess we’ll see. Last week when the house was a convalescent home for a dying dog, everything went upside down very fast. I expected to spend this week not moving or doing anything. Instead I push hard to be normal. Today was three loads of laundry, a cassarole and toffee bars. And it was the toffee bars that did it.
It goes like this, though, the way death sits with you like the hiccups. You think it’s not bothering you anymore and you have moved past it, and then you start with a wee break and you’re gone again. Those five stages of Elizabeth Kubler Ross are very neat and antiseptic and make you feel like you can spreadsheet the whole thing when your turn comes–and your turn is coming–but it doesn’t work like that. There is no “Okay I had denial, now let’s bargain for awhile.” After the first few days when you realise that nothing is quite the same you are sort of normalish and then angerbargainingdenialgrief come burbling out at the oddest times. No amount of scaring it away, of drinking water while standing on your head, makes it any easier.
You’re just there, in your kitchen making toffee bars and suddenly you remember that last time you did this he licked the bowl and your lower lip starts quivering, your lungs seize up, your hands lose their grip and you’re sitting on the kitchen floor wailing like a baby. And then you get up, put the unlicked bowl to soak and move on until the next thing.
[...] Katherine wrote this last night about death. It resonates with me because it’s absolutely the truth written eloquently. It goes like this, though, the way death sits with you like the hiccups. You think it’s not [...]
Amen, Kat. Amen.
Grief is such a strange thing. But even stranger (or merely just as strange) is that the feeling of “this is how it goes, this grief; this is really how it goes” is mixed in with “this is how it goes??”
This will probably sound cheesy, but at some point during grieving my grandfather (who dies on 2/28 this year), the words from the oft-television-advertised song by Christie Lane (?), “One Day at a Time,” drifted into my mind: “One day at a time, sweet Jesus, is all I’m asking of You.” Seems to fitly describe what you are experiencing as well.
Yes, the path of grief is just as the path of faith: one step at a time… trusting God to help you transition from the point where you had been to the next point, to give you the power and strength to do it, and to give you perseverance and endurance to bear up under the emotional load (which is rarely predictable in quality, quantity, or timing) as you make that next step.
Each memory is another smooth stone you roll around in your hand and toss up a bit, feeling the heft of it. And this collection of memories, which bring tears now, at the same time brings you much joy: the memories’ being brought together and seen as a tribute to the one you loved and continue to love.
Make God keep vivid your memories of your sweet furry, four-legged child. =)
Kat, Call me when you get a chance. I want to talk with you about something completely different and don’t have your number. You can find mine (easily) on my real estate blog.
Grief, like love, is a chronic condition. Three years later, I can be sitting at a stoplight, not really thinking of much at all except the clumps of snow on the telephone wires overhead and then…bam. All in tears over the loss of my father, who lived a good long life and with whom I mended fences prior to his departure. It still bubbles up from time to time. I now know that it’s just going to be that way.
Even now, nearly two years later, I can think of Delmar and start crying without warning. But know this, grief is a beautiful thing. I know that it seems strange for me to say in that way, but it is. Grief is necessary. It grips at your heart, hurting and tearing. It leaves you different, changed. But I couldn’t live life without it. Right now, all rememberances will hurt, but unless you pass through the grief, the joy doesn’t get to come back. I promise you that the joy does come back. I love you and I hope that you soon get to the point that you can smile at the toffee licking goodness that was Casey, even if it is a smile through tears. Don’t short change yourself or your memories of this precious child, by trying to categorize your grief. Just know that it is normal for the heart to honor a lost loved one in this way.