It sits with me. I feel it, looking at me, perceiving me, never doing much other than existing. In the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time understanding grief. I’ve listened to podcast episodes where individuals cut open their grief and share it with the world. I’ve read blogs and dissected thoughts about the way grief lives with you after you lose someone you love. And I’ve gone through months of counseling, seeking to lance the anticipatory grief of losing one of the most important people in my life. And then it happened. And grief became something I could never put away again.
At least, for today. For now.
The thoughts I keep landing on are this:
This grief is like a new appendage, a limb I have acquired through baptism of the cruelest fire. It happened so swiftly; with death came a new growth that I feel completely independent from me and completely essential to who I will become. It’s a limb I will never be able to cut off or rid myself of. I am walking awkwardly, carrying something I’ve never carried, figuring out how to exist with something new without someone who saw me through everything.
Time is the cruelest friend. The more time that passes, the less I feel the time. Her death feels like yesterday. I can picture it too perfectly in my mind. Just the other day I smelled it—the way the hospital smelled that night and the way the air felt sterile and cold. I can feel all of it, and it doesn’t make sense how so many weeks have gone by when they haven’t. Not in my head. Not when my heart aches and breaks and the grief pulls me under again and again.
My counselor asked me this week: what helps you move out of the deep sadness?
And I told her: it’s all the good and joy I have in my life. It’s abundant and full, and somehow I can hear my mom telling me to get up and live. To love her grandkids. To laugh at the things that are ridiculous and funny. To do what I love—because no matter what, I know she always wanted that for me.
It feels like a cycle of drowning and breathing, gulping fresh, beautiful air one moment and thick, murky water the next. I know I will live. The currents are not so large and encompassing these days, but they come around all the same. And I’ll find myself crying in my kitchen on a Wednesday night just thinking of her. But then it’s time to say goodnight to my kids, to hug them and love them, and I remember that this is fresh air even when I’m surrounded by water. The gifts of it are not lost on me.
Other days are harder. Other days I can’t stop the grief. It surrounds me and affects me, and I’m not me on those days. Well, maybe that’s not true. I am being deeply affected and changed on those days. The tears are more urgent, the prayers of anguish are more heartbreaking. It’s true what they say about bargaining and grief—I don’t know how many times I’ve prayed, God, I will give it all back if you could just give me more time with her. But death is not so polite that it will listen to me, and God reminds me often that she’s not here. But He is. He is with me just like this grief is with me.
I’m grateful for the imagery I have of Him, the ways I can picture Him sitting with me in the grief. Holding my hand, crying with me, taking the burden of my pain. He is so gentle and kind in my most vulnerable moments. I hate how it all feels; He reminds me that He created me just right and that feeling and experiencing this grief is what heals me bit by bit. That this grief is not just the sadness. It is the evidence of how much I loved her. How deeply she mattered to me. How precious she will always be to me.
I just didn’t want this. I didn’t want to experience this. I don’t want to live every day carrying this limb that has changed everything forever. But it’s here. It exists. And maybe it gets more lovely with time. It is bitter and uncomfortable these days. But with time, I think I will find it to be a friend, a continuation of my love for the woman I loved most in this world. Grief—a wretched and lovely friend.
JANELLE DELAGRANGE 