Passing Grief

 

This afternoon we were coming home from errands and passed a familiar landmark.  John commented that something there had changed. We discussed briefly what had changed. I recalled how often we formerly drove out that way.   I asked why it had been that we used to drive by there so frequently and John told me. 

 It was a different season of life for us.  It had been part of an evening routine to drive out that way, turn around and come home.  Just a small thing but deeply important to a very anxious little boy who needed routines to ground him.  That late afternoon/early evening drive was part of his evening routine, part of getting him ready to settle down each night.

I looked out across a field, one that was as familiar to me as my own landscape here on this property because I'd viewed it so often.  I said softly, "Oh yes...that season felt like it would last forever, but it didn't, did it?"  

John said in a choked voice, "It was long and hard at times...but I missed it when it ended."  

"Yes, I lost my way during that part of our lives, but even more when it was done." 

 "I was trying hard to be a father, as much as I could, to that boy even though I knew it wasn't my role to play.  I felt lost, too.   But he has a good man to be his father now.  His mama has a good man in her life.  It's an answered prayer, but I still miss it at times." 

It was one of those bittersweet moments that we often experience when our past steps up and gently reminds of us where we were once, of who we used to be and are no longer.

That was the long season when Katie was struggling with her bipolar disorder.  It seemed she'd make two steps forward and then fall three steps back.  And Caleb was caught in the fall out of it as Katie wrestled with crippling depression, with decision making, with controlling impulsive behavior, with functioning in a world that made no sense to her mind at all.  We were caught too, trying to desperately catch every ball as it tumbled back down from the air above as Katie juggled mental health issues, a full-time job, motherhood, depression, life, but most especially trying to keep a stable portion of earth under a little boy.

But this is not about Katie, who through therapy and medication and pure bull-headed determination has gained control of her mental health.  Nor is it about Caleb who has settled peacefully into his roles as a student, a brother, a son.   

This is about grief. 

Grief.  That sense of loss so often associated with missing someone, isn't always about losing people.  It's sometimes about losing our sense of self, or a role in life.  It can be a job.  A home we loved.  A dream.

When a season of life comes to an end we are left reeling with grief. While we'd longed for 'normal' to return, the stress and angst of the season left behind had become the normal and now we have no idea what to feel.  As grateful as we were to see that season end, as hopeful as we were for Katie and Caleb's future, our own future loomed ahead as a gaping hole of unknowns. 

If John was no longer the substitute dad, then what was he?  It had filled a role, a need left when he retired.  Now he had neither the career nor the fatherly role.  If I was no longer needed as a caregiver and a support, then what was I?  If there were no more juggled balls to be kept in the air, why were my eyes and hands constantly focused on the now empty space above me?

Lost.  That's what we both were.  Lost.  We had no idea, no clue what we were meant to do next.  We were dazed.  Our schedule of life changed.  The focus of our days was gone.  And those days loomed like empty dark spaces before us, not as the sunny, giddily free days they should have been.

We grieved the roles and life we'd been living for five years or so.  We functioned but we struggled hard in many ways.  While it had felt like a sudden life change, it was a slow progression.  It went at its own pace, the way all seasons do.  But at the end of that season, we couldn't see our way forward.  The door to what was closed firmly behind us.  We didn't see any sliver of light to guide us into the next place.  We had to sit with grief for a while.

Grief keeps its own pace.  It determines how long it's season may last.    

It looked like sadness at times, but it also looked like a lack of purpose. It looked like boredom with the life I was in.  Occasionally it looked like impatience, and it looked like anger.  It looked like frustration with myself, with John.  It looked like writer's block. 

But eventually it began to look like acceptance, and then faint glimmers of rediscovering who I am.  It began to look like a newfound purpose.  

And then grief was gone.  

What I experienced today, that bittersweet feeling, wasn't grief.  It was a recollection of a hard season that passed and sweet memories of what made that season bearable. But it was also gratitude that we had found our way once more.