At the beginning of the year, I said I would blog daily about how I was dealing/healing with grief. I was going to take a selfie every day to share what grief looked like on my face. If you followed along, you noticed that I didn't blog every day and soon the selfies stopped. The selfies stopped because my phone stopped playing nicely with my blogging site and I wasn't sure how to get my pictures from my phone to my blog. You are welcome. However, I have recently figured out how to do that. So here is my last blog selfie for the year. Actually, let's do this. How about I post the first selfie in comparison to the last selfie.. see if there is a difference......
I have noticed something that you can't really see in these pictures and that is I have a hell of alot more gray hair on my head. I keep coloring it cause I don't want to look at it. Grief has taken its toll in so many levels, but I think that is one of the most visible and uncontrollable ways. I mean, my weight is pretty visible, but that is controllable. Gray hair coming out of your head, is not something you can control; you can hide it, but you can't stop it from happening. It happened for Tracy too. We have gained a significant amount of gray hair over the course of a year (and it's not really because of our age). *laugh* We are old but we are not THAT old. And I have also noticed more (and/or deeper) wrinkles in my face this year. I just look older than I did before Nick died. It is what it is.
More than just the physical features, I have noticed other things in my life change over the last year. Friendships have changed. Some who were very close are not so close and others are even closer. I'm sure I have mentioned that before. There is no judgement in that; it is just an observation. As for my part in this, I have become more reclusive. Some things just don't seem all that important to me. While others have a deeper impact. Some things make my friends extremely happy while those same things remind me of my own pain (though some of that is getting better). Some things that hurt my friends, last year I had absolutely NO patience for and this year, I am finding it easier to dig up the compassion needed to give my friends the space they need to feel what they feel in that moment.
What I have learned is that each of us has our own struggles and every emotion for each person is valid and trying to compare my emotion to someone else's emotion is a ridiculous practice and only causes pain and harm and limits my ability to grow, move on, feel a complete range of emotions and be a good friend to those I love.
Grief is an inherently selfish emotion. It is a necessary evil. It helps us cope with something that is so unfathomable, but it also is deeply rooted in "me". When we act and live from a place of grief it 1) protects us from other pain in a time when we just can't take any more pain and 2) can hurt those people around us because we can not see beyond our own pain. In a way it retards the amount of compassion we can feel for others around us. And that is harmful. When allowed, Grief can become more than just an emotion we feel, instead it becomes a monster that acts of its own volition. It starts acting, thinking, talking for us. It takes over everything we do. And it wants other people to join it. It wants to consume other people's joy. It wants to stop and yell.. "Wait!!! Stop!!! Look at me!!! See me!! Feel me!!! It's all about me!!! Your actions must revolve around me!!! You don't get to live your own life.. you must live life by MY rules!"
I'm not saying grief is a bad thing. Like I said, it is necessary to feel. But it is also necessary to MOVE THROUGH. It is not a destination. If it was a destination, it would not be some place you would want to be for very long, as a matter of fact, having been through it, I would think it would be a place you would pay any amount of money to get the hell out of! But the ability to MOVE THROUGH it, is a gracious an beautiful thing. To look at grief as something fluid and temporary is empowering. I am not saying that I will not always have loss in my life. I am not saying that I am going to live in denial about my son's death. What I am simply saying is that I will not be the mom that allows Grief to move into my heart and take over. I will not make every decision in my life based on the fact that I lost Nick.
We go through life feeling grief over so many things. The loss of our innocence (if we were raped). The loss of a job (if it was out of our control). The loss of a house (if it was taken by some kind of disaster). We have the ability to feel grief over all of those things (and so much more). We go through the stages of grief for all of those things. But in all of those things, we MOVE THROUGH grief and grow and move on. So why then, do we think that with the death of a close loved one, our experience with grief needs to be any different? Yes, we feel differently about our loved ones than we do a job, a house, a car, or whatever. But the process is the same.
I remember when I first started this idea of blogging every day and seeing how my grief would change and heal over the year and I was told that I would not be over this in a year. And then later in the year by someone different I was told I should be further along in the healing process. It's time to move on. During this process I was reminded of another friend of mine who lost her child YEARS ago, and I met her 5 years after she lost her son an I remember how grief stricken she still was 5 years later; I see her now, and though she still misses her son on a daily basis, it looks as though she has MOVED THROUGH to the next stage. But all year long, I have watched other angel moms and observed where they are in this "game". And I have paid attention to myself.
There was a "game" I was starting to play. It was called "The Anniversary Train Game". Every 10th of the month, I would be sad. The first birthday without Nick. The first Thanksgiving and Christmas (which came before I started blogging about all of this). The first wedding anniversary for he and Suzy. My first birthday without him (all of our first birthdays without him). Tracy's first dad's day..... You get the idea. Then the 1st anniversary of his death...... It was right around the first anniversary of his death that I came across a talk show hosted by another friend of mine (who's family is also going through grief of a younger family member) and she had a Grief Coach on her show. The Grief Coach started talking about The Grief Train. It hit me hard, like a brick to the head. It is one thing to mark the "firsts" for things, that is totally natural. But am I going to spend the rest of my life dreading days that mark anniversaries that Nick is not here for? Am I going to spend every month dreading the 10h of the month? I don't celebrate every 10th of the month cause Nate was born on December 10th, so why in the hell would I dread every 10th of the month because Nick was killed on that day in November? Am I going to spend every Thanksgiving miserable because Nick isn't alive or am I going to spend it grateful for the things that ARE in my life and be grateful for the times when Nick was here?
Listening to this shifted my perspective. Everything in this life is about perspective and how we choose to look at things. How am I going to walk through my life looking at things? Am I going to look through the lens of joy and life or am I going to look through the lens of grief and death?
I am not perfect. And I know there will be days when I miss my boy more than anything and I am going to cry. I accept that. But I will not accept being STUCK in ANY destination. If I don't like something, I have the ability to change it. If I don't like where I am, I have the choice and the ability to walk away. I have the amazing ability to create a new reality. I can't bring Nick back. The reality is that his physical body is gone forever; however, I had the amazing creative ability to think out of the box (quite literally) and take some of his physical ashes to Boise Glass Art to have pieces of art created with his ashes so that Nick will be with us forever...in a creative way transformed by fire (which was his favorite thing!) I have his photos, which I have used to create photo books. We have his thumb print. We see him in rubber duckies. We have his tattoo on us. He is not gone. We have chosen to honor him and to live with him in creative-out-of-the-box ways. So there is no reason to be STUCK in a destination and I can MOVE THROUGH grief and into something new.
With that said, there are still things that happen that remind us of our pain of loss. These things are bitter sweet. Like Suzy moving on with a new love in her life. We know she will always love and miss Nick. And her new beau was friends with them while they were in school and continued a friendship with Nick after Nick and Suzy got married. He respects what they had and in no way wants to replace Nick. We adore Tom, but that does not mean that some things hurt. Once again, there is a significant lack of books on this subject.. "What to do and how to feel when your son's widow moves on....." "How to Gracefully Let Go and Accept Change"..... I think things might be a bit different if she were not living at home with us, but that is not the case. With her living at home with us, this budding romance has been very much in our space and face. No one ever intended to cause pain or make things uncomfortable, but the reality is, it has. The reality is, it has been a year since Nick has been gone and Suzy is very into Tom (at least from what we have seen). At one point, he was spending every night in our house. When we realized he had spent just about every night in our house for an entire month, we realized it was time that changes be made. If they care enough about each other to want to spend very night together, then it is time, that Suzy find her own place and create an independent life for herself.
Asking Suzy to create a plan to move out was one of the hardest things we have ever done. I felt as though I had chopped off a limb of my body. I felt as though I was losing Nick all over again. I also imagined what it must have felt like for her. She has lost Nick and now her family is asking her to move out; she must have felt like she was also losing her family. But that isn't it at all. At some point all chicks must leave the nest. Out of all of the chicks in our nest, she is the only one who has a significant amount of money to make leaving the nest easier. She is also nearly 27 years old and has never had her own place. It is time. It is part of growing up. It is part of being an independent adult.
This process has been so very painful on every one's end.
I can only speak for myself when I say that all I have ever wanted was a house filled with the laughter of children. I have adored having a house filled with nearly all of my children. It makes my heart swell with joy when we are all together around a fire pit laughing together. It makes me happy when we are all squished in a car driving to dinner or the movies. It makes me happy when we are all going to shows together. But it is also very difficult to live in a house with 6 adults and 1 teenager! As a parent, all we want is for our children to grow up an become productive, independent adults who can take care of themselves and at some point (when the time comes) help take care of us.
Could the timing of this conversation with Suzy have been better? Yes. It happened just before Christmas, in the middle of birthday season, right after my surgery when I was crazy emotional, and when Suzy is unemployed and about to head to Peru for 3 weeks. But timing doesn't change the fact that it needs to happen.....that it's time for our chick to leave the nest and fly on her own. It doesn't stop us from loving her. I don't know if she will ever realize just how much we love her. I don' think she will ever realize just how much I want to cling on to her and hold her tight. I don't think she will ever realize just how much letting her go and encouraging her to create a new life with a new man hurts. But it is the next step in the healing process for us all. It is part of the MOVING THROUGH grief.
As for the other adult chicks in our nest......those 2 are a work in progress as well. Tricia was also talked to at the same time as Suzy. They were both asked to create a plan to move out. Tricia's plan is a bit more involved, and is not wrapped up in grief but rather lack of any other family support and financial means. Hers is truly a task of helping her become independent, which starts with helping her get a car so she is more mobile and not stuck with a job that is within walking distance. And Nate? His path did involve grief, and healing. It also involves his Aspergers and keeping a job long term. For the first time in his working life, he is so close to having kept a job for a year. That is HUGE for him. So yes, even in healing from grief, we have been working with him to get him on his feet and getting him independent..like having him pay his own bills (car insurance and phone). Steps have been made in his independence as well. I guess our task for next year is to help all of our adult chicks leave the nest.....and that is a huge healing step for me... letting go of my chicks and moving on.
I still want to hold onto them all so tightly. If they are all still in my nest, I can protect them and maybe they won't be killed or die. But I also know that is an irrational thought and does no one any good. So fly they must.
I just hope that as tough as this all seems, I really hope they understand how much love goes into these hard decisions. And, gods, I hope I have the strength to hold up during this transition because I know the push back (in some cases) will be painful.
Here's to MOVING THROUGH.
