I have a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain right now, so I don’t know exactly what this post will morph into. (It’s often just as much of a surprise to me writing it as it may be to you reading it.)
As I have been processing through the different events from a year ago, I have found myself also reflecting on where I was last spring and summer, compared to now. The weight of my grief has been feeling heavy lately, and seems to be building, but it is nothing like the black void from the beginning. Even going through this whole experience with faith and testimony, not doubting that God was there and aware of me, it’s hard to accurately describe the darkness and pain from that time. So many moments, days, weeks, even months that I pleaded over and over in desperate prayer for relief, and it simply didn’t come. At least not for a very long time. I think we all have times like that, when it is so difficult to find peace, to actually FEEL God is near.
That light and peace did come, eventually. But that doesn’t dismiss what a dark and painful time it was for quite a while there. In so many ways it was MUCH harder than when Kendall was sick, or even when he died. For that first week I felt like I was in a cocoon of sorts, buffered from the world, in shock and numbed to so many things, yet somehow able to get through what needed to be done. It was crushing when the weight of everything finally crashed down on me. Looking back I am so proud that I even got up each day, went through the motions, continued on with the hope and belief that things WOULD eventually be better, that with God’s help I would be able to get through this experience I had never wanted.
I really like an analogy someone told me about grief. Imagine a box with a ball and a button inside. Every time the button is pressed there is intense pain and overwhelming grief. At the beginning, the box is just barely big enough to fit around the ball, so it is pressing constantly on that button. As time passes, and hopefully some healing occurs, the box slowly grows bigger and bigger, so as the ball moves around it is not always pressing on the button. But it does still push that button sometimes, and when it does, the pain is just as sharp. So yes, I can look back and see how my “box” has expanded since those first few months, but there are times I feel that that box is being shaken over and over and that button still gets pushed far more often than I would like.
So if I were to talk with someone who is still very new in their loss, I would say that yes, you are going to survive this. Yes, you will be able to find yourself again. Yes, there will once again be times that you can feel that light, as well as a connection to others (and hopefully to God). I would want to hug them and sit and cry, because somehow others’ losses seem to cut me more deeply now that I have experienced my own. I ache for the pain I know they must be feeling, the weight they are carrying, that void that seems never-ending.
I know that I myself am still relatively new in my own grief journey, that I am still growing and learning and adapting to living with this weight that I will always carry to some degree. But I AM learning to live with it, feeling that I am beginning to heal around it like a scar that I will always bear. It’s easier now to feel hope, and true happiness, that light and peace I crave. Despite the weight of that grief that is still there. I’m grateful that we are not meant to carry that weight alone.
(This picture is Celeste Roberge’s sculpture, “The Weight of Grief,” that seems to so accurately express the physical feeling of profound grief.)
