So what about grief?

Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that you don’t “recover.” Instead, you learn to incorporate their absence and memories into your life and channel your emotional energy toward others. Eventually, it has been said, your grief walks beside you instead of consuming you. 

It’s been two months and I am left wondering why I am not feeling better. Not sure what I expected, but I just thought that “time” would really heal all wounds...like people were telling me. And here I am feeling, well, almost worse. I still feel lost without my Mom. She is forever gone, and I can't seem to snap out of it.  I always knew the time would come when I would lose a parent. I guess I just never expected it to happen quickly. I always thought my kids would have my Mom in their lives just like I did. I should have known it could happen unexpectedly.

My mother always made sure to tell me how much she loved me so I would always know. She wanted me to know every day that I was loved, without question. And with no doubt in my mind, I always felt loved by my parents, as a child, teenager and adult. To the day she died, I felt loved. My mother was my best friend. A confidant. She was my cheerleader and life coach all rolled up into one incredible person.

Surrounded by family in her home, my mother drew her last breath. Her soul ripped from our world, and she was gone. Only the shell of my Mom remained, and at that very moment, the fabric of my world and what I knew of the world forever changed. After the funeral, I waited for the supposed closure.  It didn't come.  There was no closure...just emptiness.

Now as the everyday draws near, I feel like I am approaching a year of emptiness without her.  There was nothing good about her death. If I was looking for a “reason” for her death, there was none.   No great revelations have occurred.

It might sound bitter but over the past month, I have come to resent the saying, “There is a reason for everything.” Maybe that saying makes other people feel better about loss. Maybe it actually is true sometimes. But it isn't true all the time. One thing I know is that this experience has shaken my faith to its very core. Whatever God has planned for us or if there is a reason for her death, I will not know it while I walk this Earth.

If I learned anything from this experience, I have learned that sometimes grief does not go away. Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes it gets worse. Maybe it feels worse because we miss the person so much and we know they are not coming back. Or in my case, every time something wonderful happens, I want to pick up the phone and call my Mom...but I can't. I want to so desperately share precious moments with my Mom...yet I can't. Maybe I am just not ready yet. Right now, she just feels gone.

So what about grief?... I still grieve the loss of my Mom everyday. Not a day goes by when I don't think of her. The loss is so raw, I still cannot bring myself to go through it, I find myself dialing her  number. But maybe someday it will get better...I have to hope. I have grudgingly come to accept that maybe the sense of loss is just something I will learn to accept.

With loss, there is no right or wrong way to feel. We are living and therefore, lucky to be able to feel anything. And at the end of the day, I am so very blessed to have had such an amazing mother who loved me. I am so very fortunate for what I do have...the people in my life who helped me start to put life back together the day after she died. My family  and great friends. I am so much more appreciative of their love.

So little has changed.  So much has changed. But life goes on and so must I. Hopefully in years to come, the grief will ease. Time will heal. The memories and pictures won't hurt so much to look at...to share with my kids. Hopefully, I can be as good of a mother to my children as she was to me.