Quirky Grief Connections
If I’m not done in this grieving process, as I indicated in my last post, there are things left to examine, to mull over, to reflect on. The process is revealing, and, yes, kind of quirky.
In case you’re wondering, Webster defines “quirky” as”something or someone unconventional, odd or unpredictable.” It can also mean having a strange mix of traits that are somehow interesting or charming. So how does “quirkiness” relate to this post? Read on.
First there are the “what if’s.” What if the unexpected happened. A middle age woman I know lost her husband unexpectedly two years ago. Recently, she’s struck up a relationship with a male friend. I have no desire to know about that, but what interested me was the fact that she and her husband had talked about that “unexpected.” They had the “what if” conversation. What if either of them found themselves alone, what would they do. They gave each other permission to find another relationship. It sounded “quirky” to me, but it seemed to work for her when she faced the unexpected loss and the process of rebuilding her life.
Another quirky connection came when I read the blog post “Lens of Jen.” This young woman found the love of her life only to lose him when he died of esophageal cancer at age 40. As she grieved she also made a significant change in her lifestyle, opting to leave her traditional career for one of travel and blogging. Over the course of time she, too, found herself in a new relationship, except it didn’t work out. In her words, they had no “shared passion.”
That got me thinking. What was the passion that Mike and I shared? I wondered if we even had one. But then, out of a cloud of tears, I knew: Our passion was each other. Not only that, we had a quirky relationship. Two unmatched people (or so most people who knew us thought): me the extrovert, he the introvert. Me, busy, busy, busy. Him, relishing the quiet. I felt the need to join things; he liked being alone. But at the end of the day, we became one. I joined him in his business dream. He championed me in my run for a political office and so many other things. We melded; we thrived. We had 52 wonderful years together, and I’m so very sad he’s not here because I lost half of myself. That’s why it’s been so hard. I am rebuilding myself. Somehow I need to become whole without the other half that has left me.
Quirky connections make a life.
Recently, I reread an email my daughter sent me a while back. It was a segment from a book by Sister Joan Chittister, Aspects of the Heart. She reminded me that grief is that slice of life that takes us beyond the boundaries of our mind and makes us see life anew. Grief grows us up, she says. “When we come to understand that whatever we have we can lose, we begin first to hold everything lightly and second, to learn to squeeze happiness dry.”
Mike and I did. We squeezed the well dry, and there is no telling when it will fill again. Sister Joan says there is only the sure knowledge that we can recover if for no other reason than that so many have.
So whether it’s learning about ‘what if’ conversations or the realization that there was a passion shared, life goes on in all its quirkiness. There’s a lot to learn about living as one examines dying.