Time, distance and grief

It is 19 months since I’ve become a widow. I recently heard Ed Sheeran‘s visiting hours for the first time and the lyrics kind of blew me away. Unfortunately I am deeply practiced in grief. I lost my mom in 2001, my father in 2014, my husband in March of 2020, then two close friends at the end of August of last year. I hate that my daughter never got to meet my mother. Especially as I see aspects of her personality or talents that I know came from her. My grief over losing my husband has changed. Initially I was just numb, maybe just in shock, definitively depressed perhaps even nonfunctional as for months we went bed to couch, couch to bed. He died the week the world shut down so we were denied all of the typical rituals surrounding death and loss and grief.  There was no funeral, no wake. I didn’t sit shiva. I didn’t even put out an obituary for him, which in retrospect I totally could have done, but it never even occurred to me. Recently while lamenting the lack of having done anything to mark his death, a friend told me it was never too late. 

I began this post in October of last year, but never went back to finish it. It languished in my drafts for 10 months. We finally did a Celebration of Life for my husband this past March. It was wonderful  to hear stories and how beloved he was and it lifted something from my shoulders. I’m now two and a half years out from losing him. My life has begun to come together again. Our daughter is happy, healthy, emotionally self aware and thriving. 

Over a decade ago I read the most eloquent and resonant description of grief on a reddit thread where the question was "My friend just died. I don't know what to do." I've pulled it up on my phone and shared it with countless people whenever grief and loss are discussed.  Here it is in its entirety, Thank you Gsnow, whoever you are:

“Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, so best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”