Reflections From The Wreckage

I recently read that grief can teach you many things if you allow it to. Its been 559 days since Jake left and so much has changed while some things have remained the same. I think the first thing I have learned is that grief is sneaky and never ending. The way in which you choose to display it looks different over time. The way it effects you looks different as well. There is not a day that has gone by since he left that I haven’t cried. Not a second where I am not thinking about him, wondering what he’s doing and where he is exactly at this very moment. I can be managing doing okay one moment and the next I am undone again as if its that first day all over again.

People say that a song, scent, food, drink, picture etc sends them to their knees from time to time when grieving and that’s accurate. One minute I am doing okay the next I am thrust back to a time or a moment in a moment simply by a memory, photograph or picking up something that belonged to him. Some of the memories are joyous while others are ones you would like to forget. It really is incredible how the brain has that kind of power. Physically you’re here mentally you’re transported back to a time you’d like to not visit again while other times you want to remain forever. I guess grief is like that though.

Vulnerability is a double edged sword. I have shared so much through this blog and so much with people throughout this time. When you choose to be vulnerable you are essentially handing someone a sword. They might use it against you so choosing who you’re vulnerable with should not be taken lightly. On the other side of that for me it’s like Im going to speak about it anyway so how can it be used against me if I already spoke and owned it? Being vulnerable during grief though is like giving someone precious pearls because that part of you is sacred, fragile, beautiful, ugly, wounded, healing, scary, and inspiring all at once.

When Jake died I did not believe I would survive one more second much more another day. The pain felt so great I wondered how the human heart and body could feel and take so much yet continue functioning. Though there were times I did not want to wake up I did and kept waking up. I had this thought early on that I have had every day since. ”I have to increase my pain tolerance.” Which I have always had a low level/tolerance for. This has expanded that tolerance and tested me in ways I can’t even begin to imagine. Yet I am still here and by all outside accounts functioning normally like the rest of you. I don’t know whether to be proud, angry or indifferent about that.

I learned that in grief you have to and will learn to hold your own hand. There will be times when you have the company of others whose presence and words will comfort you. There will be more times than not where it will just be you and your grief. You begin to learn your triggers, your coping mechanisms essentially how to pick yourself up off the floor. You have to learn how to walk, speak, think and carry yourself again. All of that changes in any kind of grief but especially those involving the death of a child. You learn to mask your grief and pain to try and pick your moments strategically though at times your grief wont care where you are or who you’re with. When those times happen because of how far you’ve made it you learn that you will get back up again. A concept that seems unfathomable in the beginning and sometimes a foreign concept even now.

”Grief is simply an abundance of love with nowhere to go” You learn to begin to pour that love into people and places again in time. You do everything you can not to let your love diminish with your person who is no longer here. You will fail more often than you succeed but you keep trying.

You learn how to be comfortable and become familiar with the new you since your loss happened. The person you were before it all happened is gone and likely not coming back. Grief changes you, losing Jake has changed me in ways I cannot and will not ever begin to be able to accurately articulate. I see the world through different eyes. My voice sounds different, I view time and events as before and after. Tomorrow is and always be will be bittersweet. There are things to be hopeful or joyous about yet will always be a little less because Jake won’t be there for them. I can laugh and enjoy moments when they come but have to fight back the guilt of ”I shouldn’t be doing this, feeling this, it feels wrong.” Remembering that healing is like that and the joy Jake brought to everyones life is felt/embraced in those moments.

I’ve learned that my relationship with God will always be different from the time Jake went to live with him until I see him again. He is big enough to not only take all the rage, never ending questions, tears, silent treatment, carelessness, confusion, bad decisions, fears etc yet remain by your side. I think more than ever I have learned that he finds ways to love on you more often than not through other people. I like to think of it in a phrase that Rachel has told all of us at different times in our life ”Come here and let me love on you. Will you let me love you?” The image I created of him in my head all my life before all this not wrong but incomplete. My house of cards I built up came crashing down. Sometimes he changes situations and outcomes while other times he doesn’t even in spite of our pleas and begging. The promise was never ” I won’t let this happen to you instead I will be in this with you.” So I think when it comes to painful situations and circumstances I become aware of. My prayer would not be that he changes it for you though with everything in my I hope he does because I want to in a way shield you from this. Instead it would be that you find him in it. That he is with you when it all comes crashing down and you’re left staring at the wreckage trying to pick up the pieces.”

As this post comes to a close I think the takeaway message is that none of this easy. None of it ever will be. Grief will always be with you until you leave the planet. None of this fixes or erases the pain, it can’t. What has been done cannot be undone. I hope you never have to go through anything devastating but if you do I hope you know you’re not alone. I hope you know that you will make your way through it. One step, one breath, one second at a time.