All The Firsts

**Grief looks different for everyone. Because I don’t know what it’s like for you, my blog-reading bestie, I can only talk about my experience. If you can relate, I hope you find comfort in what I share. If yours looks and feels different, please know that I honour your fight and your feelings.**

There is this moment when I open my eyes in the morning. It’s peaceful, I can even take a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Suddenly this new reality slams into me and I’m struggling against the impact. My breath catches. Tears sting my eyes. Physical pain. Emotional agony. It hits me like a tidal wave and I feel like I’m drowning all over again. My body clenches with stress and shakes with sobs.

‘Some day it won’t be like this’ has become my mantra. Some day I will open my eyes in the morning and the grief won’t take me down. Some day her physical absence won’t bring me to my knees. Things will never be the way they were. It will be different, but it will be ok. It’s ok to be ok. I will smile every time she comes to mind. And, truth be told, she would hate the thought of me hurting. I can almost hear her giving me hell.

The grief comes in unpredictable assaults that overpower me. Calm moments interlaced with emotional anxiety over the loss. More than once when I’ve been out in the world and the waves hit, I’ve needed to hide in the bathroom or go to my car until it passes. There is no schedule to it, no specific amount of time it lasts. It comes and goes as it pleases and will continue to do so for as long as it wants. In the beginning, it felt like a complete and total loss of control, but I’ve come to learn that this is just how it works for me. I would try to control or stop it, but I couldn’t. The more I tried to fight it, the more it settled in. I learned quickly that I need to honour this, ride the wave. For now, it’s crippling. Some day it won’t be like this.

Instead of medications, I have started a weird combination of impact training, yoga, walking and meditating at least twice a day. I’ve taken to journaling and writing, trying to find a way to relieve the emotional weight I’m carrying. In those moments when I have something else to focus on, I don’t feel so broken. Medications change the way my mind works and make me feel like someone else is living in my body. The last thing I need right now is to numb myself and take on the mentality of less-than-alert zombie.

One of the hardest things I will ever show my kids is how to walk through and with their grief. We talk a lot. Sometimes we cry, sometimes we giggle as we share stories. No matter what it looks like, I don’t hide it from them. I don’t redirect their thoughts or questions. I respond as best I can. Compassion and emotional support are so important in my house and they are observed and given at every age and stage. House rules. They are learning that grief and healing do not have time constraints and that we love one another on the good days and maybe just a little bit more on the tough days.

There are so many firsts still ahead of me. Every single day is a brand new first. The first morning without her. The first call that goes unanswered. The first drive in the car where I go by her place. The first time I need her wisdom. The first time I need her to tell me she loves me. The first time I feel lonely and call her just to hear a friendly voice. The first time I drive to her place to see her and remember she’s not there. The first weekend BBQ. The first birthday party. The first time wine is on sale and I can’t take her to stock up her cabinet. The first time I leave her home for the very last time. Literally everything. I watched a lady in line at the grocery store the other day take a ziploc bag of scotch mints out of her purse and offer one to everyone around her. I felt the breakdown building and I ran out of the store, abandoning my cart in the line, as the tears spilled over. Some day, things like that will bring a smile instead of tears. 

The best explanation of grief I’ve ever heard was sent to me by a friend. She came across it as she was scrolling through Facebook one day, I’m not sure where it originated, but the concept is spot on. Basically you think of it like a box (square) with a ball (circle symbolizing grief) inside it. Also inside the box on the left side is a red button (symbolizing pain). In the beginning when your grief is new, the ball is big and takes up most of the space inside the box. The ball hits the pain button relentlessly every time it moves. The pain is constant, aggressive. You can’t control it, it just hurts. All. The. Time. As time passes, the ball shrinks, but every so often it still hits the button. For most people, the ball never really goes away. It hits the button less and less. Maybe you have more time to heal in between hits. But every time the ball hits that button, the pain is the same. The agonizing sting that takes the wind out of you, the burning tears and the heartache that brings you to your knees. 

Every now and again, I take a breath and I can smell her familiar scent. She hasn’t worn perfume in years. Instead it’s the combination of her lotions and laundry soap. When I was boxing up her apartment, the smell was obviously everywhere and some days I would just sit on the floor and breathe it in. Most recently, I was driving alone and I felt the air shift as I caught her light fragrance. There are other little things that pop up that I know are her little ways of saying hello, telling me she’s ok.

I don’t know how or when it happens, but slowly a new normal is born. Patterns change, space and time are filled. I used to believe that this meant you were forgetting and if you weren’t suffering, even just a little bit, you must not have loved them the way someone else did. I’ve come to realize that this forward movement is a way of honouring our loves in all worlds. It is our loves, our memories and our ability to move forward that creates and continues legacies. I’ve learned that it’s okay for people do their healing in their own ways. But PLEASE understand this: denial will keep you stuck. It serves no purpose to you at any time for any reason and the longer you stay in that place, the more challenging it is to leave it.

The best way to remember is to keep loving, keep living and keep moving forward. Someday it won’t be like this.

231 to go.