Journeying Through Grief

I don't know why but I feel compelled to always add some sort of caveat that my grief is my own, and should never be compared to anyone else's, least of all Kevin and their children whose grief is as different to mine as one species to another. 

I feel her smiling at me more these days. Perhaps it's just the longer days and brighter sunshine, the grace of a light-weight winter and an early Easter, but it feels that grief has finished carving its home in my heart and has begun to settle in for the long haul. This is the place where I will always grieve that she will never age beyond 43, that I can not hear her voice or type her a quick message, that there will be no more time spent together, and the years of our earthly sisterly affection are over. 

But, this is also the place that she resides with me, nudging me on towards the finish line she has crossed, laughing lovingly I finally understand something she told me years ago, and where she is with me as I am struck again by another wave of grief. This is all new. In this, even in the waves of grief, there is a hint of lightness, a bittersweetness that I can't quite explain. 

I heard the other day of a tragedy and as my thoughts and prayers went out to those left grieving, I found myself reflecting on the journey grief has been for me. I recalled:

• the profound grace in the immediacy of her illness and death
• the relentless nausea that was my companion for weeks
• the nightly midnight wakings in which hazy unreality slammed into the horror of remembrance that she was gone
• the dream in which one of my children died, from which my own guttural scream woke me to relief immediately drowned by reality and I sobbed and sobbed.
• ...and then the morphing of that season into a gray landscape that I assumed was my new lot.

And then only this week, as I was struck by the pain of loss portrayed so poignantly through art, followed by being unexpectedly met with some of her writing that echoed exactly what the Lord has been speaking to me, I had an awareness of this new sense of...befriending...grief rather than being smothered by it. This was not something I worked towards, nor even thought to hope for; it is so new that as I said, I don't know if it's a trick of the seasons or a gentle progression of grief in my heart. Whatever it is, I am grateful for it; I am grateful that when she comes to mind it is now with a smile on her beautiful face made whole. 

I hope these words might offer hope if read by someone experiencing loss in a similar way. I can not write for those who lose a spouse or children; I can't pretend to have any idea what that loss feels like nor what the path of grief might hold. I can only suspect that for those a household removed, as I am, there might be a path similar to mine.

I don't know where I would be without the prayers, support, and friendship of so many. Thank you.