A reluctant friendship

You see, we continue to say their names, share the memories, and include them in our present life as much as we can because we have a new fear — our child or children will be forgotten.

Although I am not a trained psychologist or therapist, I explained to this friend some of the differences in how people handle their grief as I have observed others to do.

Some people post about their loss on social media almost daily, and that’s okay. It’s their journey with grief and what they must do to get through the day to face their emotions in dealing with the loss. For some, putting their pain out there for all the world to see is what they need. The greater the loss is to someone, the harder it can be to process and accept. Others are more like me.

We box up our emotions, sit them on a shelf, and go about life the best we can, pretending we’re okay, trying to be strong for everyone around us, and not wanting to burden others with our grief. We are fully aware of that box sitting there, patiently waiting for us to deal with it.

Some days, we take down the box and peek inside. For me, those days are easy — if such a thing exists. These days allow me to recall a memory with a smile or maybe even a laugh. These days, grief is like the ocean gently lapping at my feet. The tears come also but I’m not drowning in a wave of grief. But, oh, those days eventually come, too.

On other days, I find myself digging out the packing tape, forcing the top closed tighter, and reinforcing the boxes’ seams because I’ve neglected it far too long. Those are the days leading up to the birthday, the death anniversary, or the holidays. The box demands my attention, no matter how hard I try to focus on the present and those around me.

These are the days my grief is a tsunami, crashing into me all at once and bringing with it all the pain I set aside since I last paid attention to my box. Admittedly, I do this to myself, and I know it. For me, this is the only way I can handle my son’s loss because, in reality, I’ve lost him twice, but that part of my journey isn’t as easily understood by others and I just don’t “go there” unless forced to explain.

Having this conversation on my mind since January, I woke days before my son’s upcoming earthly birthday last month with this thought, “Grief is worse than a midnight intruder into my home. It comes when you are least expecting it and it takes the most precious and most important people from your life. It often starts with people you know and love, but aren’t necessarily that close to you. With each person stolen from your life, grief’s presence stings less and less. It isn’t until you have a truly meaningful loss that you are faced with a decision.” I’ll tell you more about this decision in a moment but first, I want to share the longer journey for me on grief’s road.

As a young person, my first loss was the only great-grandparent I knew. I was sad about her passing, but it somehow felt natural. Afterall, she was in her 80s and, for a child who just turned nine a week and a half earlier, that was old.

It would be almost two decades before I experienced another, more important loss when my maternal grandmother passed. In those years, I lost several friends, one to suicide and others to injuries from accidents, but none of them were the same as losing a grandparent in your early 20s. Even this loss couldn’t prepare me for what was coming.

A few years later and in the span of the next five years, I lost my dad, my maternal grandfather, my paternal step-grandfather (who was the only grandfather I ever knew on this side of my family), and my paternal grandmother in this order. Of these loses, losing my dad was by far the hardest to accept.

After losing my dad, I found myself having a terrible day. For whatever reason, that day was super emotional and all I could do was cry. Now, don’t get me wrong, crying can be a good thing. What made the day so tough was that the day’s plans involved high school band shows with my teens. Those plans didn’t stop the tears from flowing and the students quietly whispered to other adults, “What wrong with Mrs. Denise?”

Fortunately for me, a long-time friend and fellow band-geek-turned-big-brother, Anthony Turner, was there with his child, too. He pulled me aside when no one else would and asked, “Hey, girl. What’s going on? The children are noticing all these tears.” It had been eight long years since losing my dad.

Thinking about Anthony’s question, I realized every year from August when Dad passed to his birthday in October, I’d cry at the drop of a hat or for no reason at all. By the end of that weekend, I realized I had slipped so far into depression over losing my dad that I no longer saw the light of day. I tried hard on my own to crawl out of that hole and eventually won the battle. A few years ago, I thanked Anthony for saving my life that day, whether he knew it or not.

Fast forward to my son’s passing. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, prepared me for his passing. How could it? This is my child and parents just aren’t supposed to bury their children. It’s out of the natural order of life and it’s difficult. No, it’s almost impossible and unbearable. It is a pain I wish on no one.

I remembered the deep depression of losing my dad and refuse to allow myself to get that depressed again. So I had a decision to make, and it was the end of my early morning thought that I mentioned earlier.

I don’t understand losing a sibling or a spouse, but I can speak to losing great-grandparents, grandparents, a parent, and even friends. It wasn’t until losing a child that I had no other choice than to invite Grief into my life. I had to sit with it and, as reluctantly as it has been, make peace with it and try to become friends with it. I have even had to understand Grief’s habits, because that is what you do with a new friend, isn’t it?

The way it intrudes upon my life at the most unexpected and undesirable moments is a challenge. The way it disappears for days, weeks, or months on end just to come barging in again from a memory or something as simple as a scent, a song, or the silliest of inanimate objects my son gifted me with, is like your best friend who never has to knock on your door when they visit. The way that some days it allows me to think about my son and smile or laugh without tears, but how on other days, Grief refuses a single memory to cross my mind without being accompanied by unbearable heartache that I’m almost certainly dying.

Despite experiencing grief my entire life, I never imagined welcoming it into every day life and learning to co-exist with it. For me, Grief is here to stay. We’re now lifelong friends, albeit it’s a reluctant friendship, at least on my part. Grief is with me every day from the it’s-4-a.m.-why-am-I-awake-so-early-today moments, to driving home alone after work. And, unlike some friendships, Grief will never call it quits due to hurt feelings or misunderstandings.