Easter. Mother’s Day. Birthdays. Father’s Day. Spring.
Summer. Fall. Holiday season. Anniversaries. School. Home. Public places. Too
much noise. Too much quiet.
We talk about traumaversaries. We talk about triggers. We
talk about grief.
What happens when all of life becomes a trigger and every
month includes a traumaversary and every day is filled with grief? We have two children who have not been able to live here at
home for awhile now, with much uncertainty surrounding when they may be able to return home. Those of us here grieve their absence. Those who are
gone grieve ours. We all grieve the loss of others who are not present. My
health is also gone for the time, leaving me bedridden for months, and I grieve as I see an entire season of life passing me
by – yet again. And my family grieves the wife and mother who is often barely
here.
This. This is where we live. Where we have been living for
some time now, without reprieve. The entirety of my life right now consists of
being sick in bed and managing grief – my kids’ and my own. There is some
ebbing and flowing over the course of days, but each day contains the traces. I
am beginning to understand certain common trauma behaviors; I am understanding
more because I am experiencing more of it myself. Call it stress, call it
grief, call it trauma. Call it a rock or a tree or a stick. Whatever it is
called, it is like living life with a filter on the brain that muddles
everything.
I am currently reading through a book, “It’s Ok That You’re
Not Ok: Meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand”. While I
will add a caveat that this is book is written from a secular perspective, so
it misses large pieces of the puzzle and I cannot wholeheartedly recommend
everything in it, the author does a good job of putting into words what it is
like to be living in a state of grief:
“Let’s say you have 100 units of brain power for each day. Right now, the
enormity of grief, trauma, sadness, missing, loneliness, takes up 99 of those
energy units. That remaining one unit is what you have for the mundane and
ordinary skills of life. That one remaining circuit is responsible for
organizing carpools and funeral details. It’s got to keep you breathing, keep
your heart beating, and access your cognitive, social and relational skills.
Remembering that cooking utensils belong in the drawer, not the freezer, that
the keys are under the bathroom sink where you left them when you ran out of
toilet paper – these things are just not high on the brain’s priority list. Of
course you’re exhausted.”
“The world itself can become a bizarre and confounded
place.”
When you have an entire family living in this state for an
extended period of time, it gets quite wearisome.
What is grief? What is this thing which feels like it has
invaded our home and lay claim to every surface? Grief is not a being who has walked into our
life and settled within our home. It is merely the name of what is. The layers
of pain enfolded around each heart within this family. The name we can call the
emotions swirling – around and over and under and within. The voices we
do not hear. The hugs we do not feel. The safety we do not know. Grief is the
empty seats around our table and the empty beds upstairs. Grief is the faded
pictures of people who are no longer near, in albums worn with use. It is the
van that feels too big. The clothes still hanging unused in the closet…and the
clothes no longer there. The ache of longing when things are okay for just a
little while and so much of you wants to believe it can really be that way, even while you know it is not. Not now anyway. It is the awareness that something is always
missing; or the crushing realization if for a moment it was forgotten. It is
the things we cannot do; the memories we cannot make.
Grief is the screaming,
the endless tears, the broken doors, the holes in the wall. It is the scars on
bodies and scars on hearts. It is the sense that you can never be enough.
Grief
is rage and grief is weary and grief is lonely.
Grief is all these things. And none of them.
What is grief?
Grief is love. Grief is sorrow. Grief is fear.
Love in a broken world. Sorrow over what cannot be. Fear of
both.
Yet there remains grace.
While my heart beats to the steady rhythm of brokenness, my
lungs yet breathe in grace with each and every breath. Within this brokenness, the threads of His grace continue on.
And therefore I have hope.
“Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are
not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness..
I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.’”
Lamentations 3:21-24
