Grief

Grief takes you. It grabs you by the heart, reaching in with long, cold fingers that wrap around your heart and hold, daring you to move or breathe or look away just for a moment. It takes your undivided attention.

And you live like that. Waiting. Waiting for the feeling to pass, the clutch to release even the tiniest bit so you can shift your stance, avert your eyes… see beauty in the world once again.

I have been so, so, so lucky in my life. I was still a teenager when my first child was born, and the others all came along before I’d even reached the age of 30. We’ve had some scares… a few car accidents, a broken arm, always the trips to the E.R. with the youngest boy for stitches. That one surgery on his eye. But I’ve never had to drop to my knees and beg the Universe to please take me instead of my child. I’ve only barely flirted with the horror of what it’s like when a child doesn’t show up, doesn’t arrive home safely.

At the moment I am writing this, all four of my children are well and safe, to the best of my knowledge. Lucky, lucky me.

Because how do you ever get out of bed if you lose a child? I don’t know. I couldn’t.

Before I ever graduated high school, my best friend, who was a year older, was happily on her way to college classes one beautiful spring morning when she was hit by a drunk driver, sustained massive head injuries and died a few days later. That moment. That phone call. Hearing that she was undergoing surgery on her brain, but they didn’t expect her to survive… that’s when I first felt that cold hand of grief on my heart. And it took me. It dragged me around my room, not allowing me to lie down or sit or get comfortable in any way or even kneel. And it taunted me. “You’re losing Becky. She’s dying. She’s leaving. You wanted to be the one to leave, but she talked you out of it, and now you’re staying here and she’s leaving without you.”

Each word was a punch to the gut. And they just kept repeating until my stomach ached and I couldn’t breathe and I was absolutely overwhelmed with the feeling of complete and utter helplessness. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t even sit beside her and hold her hand.

Did I pray? I tried. Back then, I thought I had to work at being a spiritual person. I became proficient at parroting. We would spout off with this rhetoric about God’s will and things happening for a reason, words that roll off the tongue so easily until your best friend has been senselessly run down by a man who’s had several prior DUIs and has once again gotten behind the wheel of a car after spending the night drinking. How is that “God’s will”?

I didn’t know how to reconcile it.

To whom do you go for comfort when the person who has always been the one to comfort you has died?

Grief is relentless and merciless.