Guess I’m not done yet.

Grief is a reminder of the depth of our love.

It’s been a little over a month since I decided to end my blogging series about Mike. It’s also been two months, two weeks and one day since marking the year anniversary of his passing. It’s supposed to be getting easier, right?

I guess that’s why I decided I’m not done yet. I realize that I’m probably not done grieving. But it’s not getting my equilibrium back that concerns me. For whatever reason, I seem pretty shaky right now, both physically and mentally. My daughter said it was because “Mercury was in retrograde.” (?) Maybe it was the bout of COVID that I had a few weeks ago. Whatever it is, there is a weakness in my psyche that just doesn’t feel right.

Perhaps I had the mistaken impression that once you get through those “firsts,” things will be easier. I’m not finding that to be true. There’s a heaviness to the point of physical exertion that I sometimes feel without doing a darn thing. And in response, it’s like I have to over exert myself to get out of the funk. What a quandry.

One thing occurred to me. In this grieving “cycle” there is the anger stage, which I’m not sure I’ve been through. I was never angry at Mike. Cancer, maybe, but not him. Perhaps I am angry because I’m pretty irritated with feeling this way. I’ve never felt the need to go to grief counseling, but I’m beginning to think I need to talk to someone. I checked in with my longtime general practitioner for my annual physical. Everything looked fine.

Suffice to say I’ve been doing a fairly good job of beating myself up about the way I’m feeling, all the while missing my husband AND feeling guilty for all the things I did or didn’t do when he was still alive. Not only that, in the last several days I’ve had at least two people tell me that the grieving process actually gets harder the second year out. Gee, thanks a lot.

So just when I’m about to throw up my hands and stick my head in the sand, I read a passage from a book that jolted me. “The Book of Joy, Lasting Happiness in a Changing World” was compiled by Douglas Abrams through conversations with His Holiness the Dali Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The book just happened to be on the suggested reading list for a trip I’m taking with my two daughters — a Road Scholar Rejuventation Retreat in Santa Cruz, CA. (Yes, the experience will be covered in a future post.)

Back to the book. What brought me up short were the Archbishop’s comments about humanness. I quote: “We get very angry with ourselves. We think we ought to be supermen and superwomen from the start. The Dali Lama’s serenity didn’t come fully formed. It was through practice of prayers and meditation that the gentleness, the compassion grew, his being patient and accepting. Accepting circumstances as they are, because if there are circumstances that you cannot change, then it’s no use beating your head against a brick wall; that just gives you a headache.”

Well, I can understand that. More prayer and meditation? Perhaps. When all else fails, we pray? Except it should probably be the other way around. We hurt because we fail to pray. It reminded me of the prayer we Catholics often say to Mary. We pray to be lifted from this life that is a “vale of tears.” But Bishop Tutu’s message offered a different take. It was clear he knew the prayer, but he countered the negative by saying that we can use our tears, our stress and our frustration as a well from which we can draw life-giving waters for our emotional and spiritual growth.

It sort of had me awe-struck. Yes, I’m being hard on myself. I’ve descended into a valley of tears, but in that well of sadness are life-giving waters that can help me ascend and heal. Don’t get me wrong, this hasn’t settled me down completely but it’s certainly helped.

Then in the very next chapter the Dali Lama talked about suffering and grief. He reminded me to “focus on what you had, not what you lost.” He continued: “Sadness and grief are, of course, natural human responses to loss. But if your focus remains on the loved one you have just lost, the experience is less likely to lead to despair. In contrast, if your focus while grieving remains mostly on yourself — ‘What am I going to do now? How can I cope?– then there is greater danger of going down the path of despair and depression. So again, so much depends on how we respond to our experience of loss and sadness.”

He said that grief is a reminder of the depth of our love. Without love, there is no grief. When we feel our grief, uncomfortable and aching as it may be, it is actually a reminder of the beauty of that love, now lost.

So for the first time in quite a while I looked above my computer monitor to the message taped there, written with Mike’s own pen, the inscription he had placed on the blanket he gave me the last Christmas we had together.

Yes, Mike, I know and I will.

I think I’ll sleep better tonight.