Good Grief

Grief was thrust upon my family when we lost my son's father unexpectedly.  At the time, grief at our loved one's passing didn't seem like a gift.  More like a nightmare. As it turns out, our journey through grief is both a nightmare we can't wake from, and the gift of a love that lives on.  This is our journey.

A week and a day

Thanksgiving. A day that brings everyone together for family, food and to give thanks.  Nothing can stop the holidays.  Not even death.  We didn’t let it stop us.  Thanksgiving Day and we all gather at your mom’s house.  She’s still hosting the day as planned.  I don’t know how.  I am not sure how she’s even functioning, but she is.  Cooking a turkey with all the trimmings for the large extended family. 

Nothing to see here, folks.  Just a broken family pretending like everything is fine.

There are kids in this family, and for them we all pretend that everything is normal.  Maybe a bit for ourselves.  Except it’s not normal.  And, never will be again.  Everything has changed.  Today we pretend as if nothing has changed. 

There are brief moments where it seems like the truth.  Sitting there in the living room, it seems like if I had just turned my head quicker, I would have seen you walking down the hallway.  A split second sooner and you would have been seen ducking into the kitchen for a piece of candy. 

Sitting there in your mom’s living room, you are just on the edge of my peripheral vision.  Always there, if only I had just turned my head quicker.  Then everything could be normal again.

Except everything has changed.

Thursday

This is the first day of the rest of our lives without you.

It's the very first thing that comes to mind when I open my eyes.  Pulling the pillow over my face I sob into it.  Big, gut wrenching sobs.  I don't want to remove the pillow.  Don't want to see the morning.  Don't want to see the day.  Don't want to see this is real.

Only there is our boy.  Downstairs on the couch, where he finally fell into a restless sleep sometime in the middle of the night.  Downstairs, where I sat for hours watching him toss and turn.  Afraid to leave the room and let him out of my sight.  Downstairs, where I tiptoe, afraid to disturb his much needed sleep, but needing to be there when he wakes.

I'm afraid for our boy.  He is going to have to take a journey that I know nothing about.  He's way too young to have to walk this road.  It's not fair, and desperately I wish that grief was a tangible thing.  I need death to be a living, breathing entity. Need to throw myself over our child and prevent it from touching him.  I picture death as a dragon, and myself decapitating that beast with a sword.  No, a three headed dragon. I need to do a lot of decapitating.  I need death to be physically in this room with me, so that I can punch it, kick it and spit in it's nasty face.  Need to destroy it, before our boy wakes up.

Only there is not a way to rid this grief that is here with us now.  There is just our boy waking up, awareness seeping into his eyes, and causing him to flee for privacy.  A moment to gather his thoughts.

I don't know what to do.  So, as he re-enters the living room I do what has been done every other morning of his life.  

"Good morning, Sweets"  I say.