Live & Learn -- Coping with Grief

Each person handles grief and loss in their own way. Over the past week I have learned that my coping mechanism is to stay busy.

 

I left the hospital last Thursday after my dear Godfather, my Uncle Steve, passed away after a brief but brave battle with lymphoma. I had no idea what to do or where to go. I knew that my mom and her siblings needed time and space to grieve, but I was an emotional disaster and in no state to go back to the office, so I just went home and curled in a ball on my couch. I eventually cried myself to sleep, only to awaken a few hours later in a massive panic attack. That's about the time poor Stew called and tried to talk me down from my hysteria. Eventually he left work and came home and be with me.

 

Since then, I've realized that being alone, or quiet, or allowed to think, brings back the panic attacks and sobbing. I think about Steve, and how much I miss him, and the fact that I'll never see him again or introduce him to my son. I think about my sweet aunt and cousin and how great their suffering must be. I think about my angel of a grandmother, who has now lost her husband and three of her children to cancer. I think about my darling mother, whose loving heart has been shattered by the loss of her older brother, who she has looked up to her entire life. I think about myself, and how helpless and lost I feel. I think about faith, and the fact that if I believed in god I would give him the middle finger right now.

 

And to keep from being drowned by these thoughts and feelings, I stay busy. I attend graduations, and bridal showers, and yoga classes. I work, I run errands, I cook and I clean. I play the music too loudly in the car, because when it's quiet my thoughts begin to whirl and I catch my breath, realizing that once again tears are raining down my cheeks. I feel selfish, sad, and alone.

 

I think about Steve, and I try to focus on all the happy memories I have of him. The days we spent at Green Lake, walking for the American Cancer Society. The Irish Blessing he gave on our wedding day. The family barbecues he organized. His love of the Sounders. The random emails he would send me, with little tidbits about books he thought I would like, or inquiries asking me to question my faith (or lack thereof). He always, always forced me to think outside the box. I will miss his quick wit, his brilliance, his generosity, and his bright smile.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Let us agree
   for now
   that we will not say
   the breaking
   makes us stronger
   or that it is better
   to have this pain
   than to have done
   without this love.

Let us promise
   we will not
   tell ourselves
   time will heal
   the wound
   when every day
   our waking
   opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
   it can be enough
   to simply marvel
   at the mystery
   of how a heart
   so broken
   can go on beating,
   as if it were made

   for precisely this -

as if it knows
   the only cure
   for love is more of it

as if it sees
   the heart's sole remedy
   for breaking
   is to love still

as if it trusts
   that its own stubborn
   and persistent pulse
   is the rhythm
   of a blessing
   we cannot
   begin to fathom
   but will save us
   nonetheless. 

Jan Richardson

Steven Dennis Swift

1952 - 2014

 

 

 

This has been another edition of

Join the party... follow your hosts and link up your post!