There are days when I barely recognize myself. Grief has a way of quietly, relentlessly rearranging who you are. Since everything changed, every day is a lesson in adapting to a version of myself I’m still getting to know.
Tears waiting to fall all day ran down my cheeks as I told my husband that I’m so unbelievably sad today. I sat on the couch, my body feeling out of control, yet it sat unmoving, staring at the two most beautiful lil humans playing on the floor two feet in front of me.
I’ve become a person who knows how to be heartbroken and happy at the same time.
I did it. I survived it. I survived the phone call, the funeral. The quiet after everyone left. I survived the first year. What didn’t survive was the version of me who existed before. She disappeared somewhere between shock and acceptance. Now I love and live differently. Grief rearranged everything. It has altered me into the best and worst versions of myself.
The best version of me sees how fleeting life really is. How simple life is. The beauty. More than once, my brother and I have sat on the phone, reminding ourselves of all the things we have to be grateful for in our lives. Our spouses, healthy kids. Our health. We have food and homes. We have jobs to wake up to in the morning. We have a Mom. Our in-laws are amazing. Through all the chaos and disbelief, life is so simple; love those around you, and allow yourself to be loved. If you have love in your life, you are winning.
Although I can identify the goodness I’ve been blessed with, the rose-colored glasses I once wore, blessedly unaware of grief, turned a darker shade over this last year. My heart loves more deeply because it understands a loss that can’t be undone. My vision has become wider because it’s been exposed to the unfathomable and unimaginable.
I sit at the dinner table; Tman giggling at his sister telling an imaginative story about a piggy that walked into a store to get a snack. I see Tein’s giggle, and I hear Marlow’s story, but my mind is paralyzed in memories and thoughts from a different lifetime. My body moves on autopilot. Before I know it, the kids are in bed, and I survived another day. I ask myself if I cherished the day. Guilt floods into the entirety of my body. The anxiety that lived in my head starts to course through my blood.
No one talks about how hard it is to lose a parent while being a parent. Showing up while your world is falling apart. Explaining things to your children that you can’t quite understand yourself. Smiling through the pain because their little hearts deserve peace. Being their safe place while you desperately search for your own.
Everyone knows a smile is just armor when your soul’s in battle. Everyone understands crying in silence, but still getting dressed. Everyone understands the storm in your chest. It’s a silent war.
Maybe not everyone knows…
There will be a death in your life that stuns you. You will lose someone, and in that loss, you lose everything that once made sense. Your future is cracked, every piece of it reshaped because someone you envisioned as such a large part of it is no longer around. You will think you know what grief is until the grief is yours. Until it is a grief so personal it changes the trajectory of your entire life.
I’m a pretty tough person, but if someone hugged me and said, “I know you’re not okay, but I’m proud of you for being this strong for so long”. I’d probably fall apart into a million pieces.
There is no punch line to this post. I don’t even have any more to say. I didn’t have it planned in my head before I started typing (as I usually do).
But maybe there is a lesson:
Forgive yourself for not knowing earlier what only time could teach you.
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