No where to go but up.
I never thought it would be this hard. One year has passed and I’m still recalling those final days. Today marks the first anniversary of his passing. I ache. I’m drained, almost weak.
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When does grief end. Truth be told, I don’t think it does. Maybe I’ll just learn to manage it. In a short poem by Paul Irion he says: “Life can be the same after a trinket has been lost, but never after the loss of a treasure.”
I attended a visitation recently for a woman who died as a result of a car accident. Her widowed husband asked if it gets better with time. I just hugged him and gave no answer. Because, quite frankly, there is no answer. It’s an individual journey, and it can be overwhelming at times. Grief, death — they are a part of life. We know that. But when we’re faced with it, it seems absolutely unbelieveable. How can that be? Nearly everyday, still, as I wander around my home, I tell him: “I still can’t believe you’re gone.”
But he is gone and everything has changed. Again from Irion’s message:“If life went on the same without the presence of the one who had died, we could only conclude that the life we remember made no space, meant nothing. The fact that your loved one left behind a place that cannot be filled is a high tribute.”
But that story has ended. How do I write a new story without him? I’m not sure. Like the song from the Barbie movie, “What was I made for” I asked myself that question. What’s in store for me. More importantly, how will I use my time. I reflected on my mother’s years of widowhood, losing dad when they both were only 69 years of age. She went on to live almost 30 years and she did it in style. Will I? I wonder. How do I create my story without Mike.
Sometimes answers come in the most unlikely places. In my case from a 10-year old girl who takes piano lessons from me.
Even as a beginning player, she seems to pick up tunes easily. One day I asked what she was playing. “It’s from Up and it’s called Married Life,” she remarked. What’s that, I said. She looked at me like I was really out of touch. So not to be undone, that night I watched the movie, and, as such, had a good cry.
The animated movie tracks the life of a balloon salesman and his wife, going through the ups and downs of married life, saving money for adventures they planned to have together. Life always got in the away and the pennies saved went to more mundane but necessary things like a leaky roof. Sadly, the wife dies and with her the plans they’d made for those great adventures. But in his despair, the husband finds a photo book where his wife kept all her memories of their life together and evidence of how much she had enjoyed it. Her message to him in that book was “Go Up, find your new adventures because I’m okay.” And so he does, attaching a bundle of his balloons to his home UP in search of those adventures.
No balloons on my house, but I need to heed the message and move UP. I read somewhere that grief creates space in us to grow if we let it. My heart’s been broken by the loss of Mike, but maybe I can open it a little. Like lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s memorable song: “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
I don’t know what lies ahead. I don’t know if I’ll continue writing this blog. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. There’s just a lot I don’t know right now. But I’ll keep searching and in so doing begin my story. A new one, but one that’s still filled with beautiful memories and an example of how to live a good life.
I’ll go UP.