Gratitude for a day full of possibilities.
The choices we can make about our world and our lives. Is this true when such deep grief hits? Is it more than the loss of person we loved but also for the life we once had the person we were? It seems as before my life was full of possibility. I look back at pictures filled with love and hope. My face book memories describe events and pictures of a person who I no longer recognise. Those days the sun always shined now it is cold dark and dull. It is like the lights have been dimmed.
In first year of grief, I took on this new journey with my inner resilience and started new beginnings. Being here writing is one, as is art works and sending time alone in nature. Time has moved on in this strangest of years and as the world shifts, I feel I am stuck in my grief bubble watching the world move around me. I watch other’s lives of meeting up and celebration. Connections of others to create new memories, a world full of new possibilities. Meeting up for me, although full of joy and love underneath is a deeper feeling of clinging to each other as I survive. As persons who grieve we tell our stories of hope with laughter to convince ourselves. We are lost in grief and have lost our dreams and aspirations. It is hard to see opportunity in tomorrow when the one we lost is never returning.
I cannot remember walking forwards before, or indeed the direction of change I was making. My life and family life were safe. I live now with daily anxiety that life can never be normal, a day resembling any kind of okay will crash and burn. There is no “safe” now. I used to deal with challenging life events by telling myself that tomorrow it would be better, that time in itself would heal. It is a myth that time does heal grief. There are no stages to move through to come out the other end fixed. There is no learning or opportunity in the world that I would not swop for more time with my dear boy. What exists is a new way of survival that involves every sense of my being. It is like constantly feeling that I am drowning in the roughest of seas. Sometimes I ride the waves, other days I sink.
Last year all my energy I spent on being with my boy, keeping him close. I felt that he was there beside me. Finding feathers, birdsong and trees and reaching into deep spiritual faith made me feel connected. This is fading now like the lack of warmth and light in this month. I am weary with seeking and asking questions that never get answered. I know deep down to not look in wrong places and that in moments of complete being life is well okay. Mostly the energy to work at the pretence for the rest of world of some normality leaves little left to seek on pointless journeys with little answers.
What has happened to that sense I had that there might be hope in connection to the great mystery? I held those words tightly; hope and mystery. Writing this makes me realise I need to not rush this. Charging towards joy seeking whilst carrying sorrow will only bring despair. It is important to remember all unanswered questions must be placed with love and given to the great mystery. The energy of seeking joy is wasteful. Time to stop and breathe. Not moving on and on and on is okay. Making time to reflect, ponder and find wonder in small things is enough to find hope for now.
I as write these words there is a quiet realisation that deep spirituality does not come in big gestures or ways of life. I need to stop comparing another’s seeking with my own. I have to find ways to again and again however vulnerable to be my true self in in this deep sorrow and keep it real. The deepest of sorrow exists in this world now with a truth I know that changes everything.
Returning to new possibilities. I carry around with me the notion that death and taking one’s life is a choice. It sits in my pocket like a dark pebble or stone to be turned over. I am choosing not to do this and therefore choosing to remain here and now on this grief journey, this life I never expected. I am here now choosing to be alive. I cannot live alone with this sorrow and therefore in the connecting with others there will and is joy, love and more beyond. I must make time now to think about new possibilities. However small new possibilities have already started. Back to balance again and again. Both sorrow and joy are intertwined with love and it is all of this now that will keep me somehow moving forwards in the high days and low days. There is no map or plan for this journey of grief.
anah1964 