My heart is a little raw this year.
Over time, our understanding and the meaning we make of our stories, changes and expands. Just as I thought my grief was becoming quite tidy, I’ve had this past year: A year of significant exploration and understanding and an opening of my heart to see the ways I’ve been shaped and the fingerprints of God all over my story - the wounds and heartache, the joys and gratitude. I think this is why my heart feels tender as this season of grief rolls around. In all of this, I am more aware of what it feels like to be alive to life and perhaps more aware of those times when I closed my heart to life in many ways.
After Ryan died, I went with my go-to strategy. Be okay. Look okay. Act okay. Smile. This will keep everything from sliding out of control. It's all I knew. I’d done this since I was a little girl. If life was chaos – organize something. If I felt sad – pretend I wasn't. If I was overwhelmed - get busy and get over it.
I returned to Calgary the week after Ryan’s funeral and completed all of my (university) finals with great marks. I actually gave a class presentation to 50 students the day I flew home for the funeral. This was possible because I put his death in a box somewhere inside of me. Certainly, I didn’t contain it all that well and what I was able to contain was suffocating me. But I guess I knew if I really unwrapped it and dealt with it, I wouldn’t function. Those next couple of years are a bit of a blur. I think I lived them like a robot. I shut off nearly everything so the pain wouldn’t kill me. But I believe God is so crazy gracious with us as we try to figure out this being human thing. Two years after Ryan died, I sat up in the middle of the night and it all hit me. And I started sobbing and heaving and choking on my tears. I felt scared at the hurricane of grief. That was the beginning of real grief work for me. My real journey of grief started that night. And this year, I’m reminded that it will always be a process. This year I’ve been remembering things about his life and death - and our lives without him - that I don’t let myself think about too often. And so it’s a different part of the journey.
I returned to Calgary the week after Ryan’s funeral and completed all of my (university) finals with great marks. I actually gave a class presentation to 50 students the day I flew home for the funeral. This was possible because I put his death in a box somewhere inside of me. Certainly, I didn’t contain it all that well and what I was able to contain was suffocating me. But I guess I knew if I really unwrapped it and dealt with it, I wouldn’t function. Those next couple of years are a bit of a blur. I think I lived them like a robot. I shut off nearly everything so the pain wouldn’t kill me. But I believe God is so crazy gracious with us as we try to figure out this being human thing. Two years after Ryan died, I sat up in the middle of the night and it all hit me. And I started sobbing and heaving and choking on my tears. I felt scared at the hurricane of grief. That was the beginning of real grief work for me. My real journey of grief started that night. And this year, I’m reminded that it will always be a process. This year I’ve been remembering things about his life and death - and our lives without him - that I don’t let myself think about too often. And so it’s a different part of the journey.
I was recently looking for a card for a friend and noticed this. It was strangely comforting.
Ryan and I were closer than any brother-sister I’ve ever known. So I think there was something in this that acknowledged how much I lost when he died. My world felt broken, irreparable. I felt broken, irreparable. I received lots of heartfelt cards when he died. But this was like finding a card to give myself – my brokenhearted sister self.
In addition to almost buying myself a card, I almost bought myself a plant in memory of Ryan. Now that was unexpected and weird. It's weird because I can't keep plants alive but more because after the funeral, our house was literally filled with plants and flowers. They were everywhere. I hated it! I hated being in the house filled with flowers and plants and the smell of flowers and plants. I felt suffocated by them actually. Every time I looked at those plants, which I knew were given with love and the intention of comforting us, it actually made me feel angry and overwhelmed. It was a blaring reminder. They were there because Ryan was dead.
This week, I ate noodles and tomatoes (his favorite).
And remembered his love of Funyuns (didn't eat any though. We don't have them in Canada - I took this picture in Hawaii). Funyuns and gatorade - his favorite combo.
Yesterday, I sat all day in my pj pants and my brother’s old shirt (it has a special story all its own). And I wrote my thoughts on grief for this year.
Day 5
A couple of months ago, I gave a half-assed effort at overcoming my addiction to earl grey tea lattes.
In the interest of being a much kinder mother, I abandoned my caffeine and sugar free mornings. I thought the loss of my sweet latte would be good for my waistline but it ended up not being too good for the hearts of my kids (no morning caffeine = not a very patient mama). It was Day 5 and I knew it would be the hurdle. I bundled up the kids for errands but I also had a secret motivation for going out. Starbucks – my desperation outweighed the teeny tiny debate I had within myself.
I was a little stunned by the rush of gratitude that swelled in me for the Starbucks barista as he handed me my box of tea. I felt more kindness toward him than I had shown to my kids and Jay in the previous 3 days. As I tucked the tea in my bag, I felt relieved and excited. I also felt a little pathetic because it was only Day 5 and we are only talking about tea.
When I got home and the kids went for naps, I sipped blissfully on my foam-topped latte. I felt an “ahhhh” sensation in my body. It felt good. As I sat there, I thought of my brother and the many like him who want desperately to end the hold their addictions have on them but can’t. I’m not judgmental toward drug addicts (many other things, certainly, but not this). The person I loved most for my entire growing up years was one. But as I got high on my tea, I felt a new respect that they keep trying. My own failure means a few extra pounds, less energy, maybe a couple of cavities but overall, my life does not hang in the balance. For addicts, each time it’s a life and death battle. Each time they hit the brick wall of Day 5, they feel pathetic. To feel better they turn back to the ugly that comforts and destroys them all at once. Yet many continue to gain the courage to try again- to battle, not only their demons, but their bodies as they try to cleanse themselves. And I can’t even give up a stupid cup of tea.
I miss you, Ryan.
I wish I could sit with you and tell you that I know it won’t be easy. I wish I could hug you tight and say that I know there will probably be a Day 5-many Day 5’s-where you are giving your best shot but just can’t handle it and so you go get high. I’ll be able to understand, even just a little, that Day 5 sucks. I would tell you that it takes incredible courage to get to Day 5 or to start back at Day 1, dreading and knowing Day 5 is coming again. Sometimes it even feels like the best choice, the loving choice, to cave. I would hold on to you and tell you that we’ll walk together. You’re not alone. I’ll walk with you. And I will do my best not to judge every time you get to Day 5 and give up. And we’ll start all over- me with you. Of course I’d be hoping and counting on a Day 6 coming one day. And we would throw a big party when it did. Maybe I’d even make you one of those posters with chocolate bars and a cute “You did it” message like I made you when you came home from Costa Rica.
None of us really knew what to do – how to help you. So we skirted the issue and let ourselves off the hook with feigned awareness to the cavernous chaos that lived in you. In darker moments, I remind my heart that I cannot hold myself responsible with what I know now for what I did then. It helps. Just a little, but not nearly enough. I don’t know what might’ve happened if we’d thrown 110% at you. Lately, this has been something I think a lot about. What if we had thrown 110% of our love, of our resources, our support, our “there’s nothing you could ever do to make me stop loving you” kind of love? Maybe you would still be dead. Maybe not. But from this place of regret, it seems that there would be less regret if we had done something different. In my head, I know this is an illusion. There are always questions and regrets and what if’s in death. They adjust to meet the grief. Its part of the journey, I think.
I miss you. My life began with you in it...
...You always loomed large in my life and in my heart. You were and are such a big part of who I was and who I am becoming. I’ve come to realize you were the first person I gave my heart to. And so it’s weird to have you growing smaller in the whole scheme of my life. 10 years without you-my whole adult life. I hate that.
I wish you could come over and teach Evan how to dribble. I’d even let you dribble…on my wood floors…in the house…without complaining about how loud and annoying it is. I wish I was buying you birthday gifts instead of donating your birthday money to Teen Challenge...
...I wish you were more than just a story to my kids. I wish they could know your wide smile, enveloping hugs, your tell-it-like-it-is style and your great sense of humor. I wish you could pick me up by my armpits and spin me around like you used to. I wish we could lay on the floor and talk for hours while listening to KC and JoJo’s one hit wonder. I wish you were here to tell me the truth about myself no one else dares to say.
I hope you’re on a road full of beauty and peace and comfort. I hope your anguish is over. I’d like to think that you still play basketball –with a little less drive and ferocity to prove you are something but with a settled peace that knowsyou are something. Just you – the way He made you. And I trust all of the wounds and devastation and infections and bad choices – they are woven into your story with the beauty that only His hand can do. With certainty, I trust in the mercy of God – for your messes and for mine.
Today was a very hard day. Maybe one of the hardest for me so far. That was unexpected. So, no nice-and-tidy-wrap up to all of my thoughts on grief. No perfectly made bow to put on the end of this hard day. No perfect bow but a softening of the day nonetheless when my girl is full of sweetness and my spunky son is full of stories and hopes and cuddles.
