Grieving Togetherness
I want to take you inside of my personal space and experience because it’s easy to think that while I teach this, I don’t live it, and the reality is I teach this because I live it. I’m in it with you, and it doesn’t always feel good. So here’s a juicy peak at my own time deep in it recently walking hand-in-hand with myself and Love.
Have you ever sat in the stillness and silence to listen to your soul? I have, and it is uncomfortable. First, there is the succession of judgy voices making suggestions about all the things I should or could be doing. You know, productive things, busy things, money things, cleaning things, all the things. Next comes the compelling voices, begging you to do something, eat something, watch something, call someone, anything other than this stillness. It takes some strength to be still until the voices settle down, which they do, eventually.
It’s Sunday, a beautiful crisp Sunday in mid-January. I woke feeling the restlessness calling me. It sounded like it was a ways away. I centered in and asked, what is mine to do today? There is this hunger this yearning this unsettledness. Go for a walk in the woods my besties suggest. I did. It was glorious. And not enough. The yearning was still there.
My boyfriend came home, all busy fixing motorcycles, very immersed in his tasks and to-dos. He says he’s surprised I’m not outside. Me too. He gathers his tools and goes on his way. So, I go outside. I opened the book one of my besties bought me for my birthday. Words leave the page, enter my eyes, and slide off my consciousness like it’s made of Teflon. Okay, so not that. And I am cold. Inside, another bite of Lily’s dark almond chocolate.
Sit still, I hear. And there it is…sadness.
We are two weeks away from the day that changed my entire family. A day I saw coming, thought I was prepared for, and as it turns out, was not prepared for in the slightest.
My sweet Daddy, just 2 weeks shy of his 94th birthday, slipped into the world on the other side of the veil. I was there. My sister Donna was there. Nothing about it was shocking or surprising. He was almost 94 and our mother had made the same journey a year and a half earlier. I was glad it happened quickly, as he would have wanted it – without a lot of fuss. Daddy was like that. He wanted to fuss over everyone he loved and didn’t want anyone to fuss over him.
The days after his death were filled with family and preparations and decisions and plans and food and hugs, and togetherness. Togetherness so precious and expected and almost invisible. The togetherness that I took for granted and wish I hadn’t. This togetherness of family was one of Daddy’s greatest joys. He loved nothing more than to have everyone under one roof sharing a meal or celebrating something.
There was no way for me to predict that this would be the last togetherness of its kind. And yet, as it turns out, that is exactly what it was. The togetherness was more precious and delicate than I knew. I never questioned it, never thought that the togetherness would go when Daddy went.
I can’t tell you what happened because I don’t begin to know or understand. The details don’t feel all that important right now, though they did at one point. I tried in vain to untangle the knots in the chain, to understand what had happened and when, to do or say anything, desperate to keep the togetherness alive. It was not meant to be. And so, two weeks after Daddy’s funeral was the end of the togetherness. I left my sister’s house, car packed, expecting to return in a few days. The three sisters had one last lunch in the togetherness. I drove from Houston to Austin not realizing the togetherness was now over.
The next few weeks were a special kind of hell. That racy out of control run-away train kind of feeling you can’t put back in the box no matter how hard you try. Things were said and written; decisions were made that tore the very fabric of the togetherness apart. I could feel the permanence of what was happening. I warned that what was happening could never be undone. I could not stop what was happening. And after days and tears and begging and pleading I surrendered to what was happening, exhausted and confused, emotionally battered, lonely, grieving, I remember calling a friend and yelling, “where are the people who bring casseroles over when someone dies?! I am not okay!”
I told my young adult sons that I was not okay, that I needed them. My boys scooped me up, fed me, led me around, helped me navigate the unthinkable end of the togetherness. My friends listened as I spun in circle after circle after circle trying to make sense of it. Some things never make sense, no matter how many different ways you look at them, turn them around, put them down, pick them up, toss and turn, chew on them and spit them out.
Those who were there to love me held me gently as I continued to ping-pong in this new hell I was in. I wanted to make sense of it so the pain would stop. I wanted to rush to acceptance and forgiveness and back to Love. But you can’t rush those things. There were the days I went to sleep thinking about it and woke up crying about it. I thought it might never turn me loose.
And then, like all things, time finally begins its merciful bath. First, there was a day that I didn’t cry, which, of course, made me cry. Then there was laughter again, and lightness, and fun. And then there would be darkness again around a birthday or something else that might remind me of the togetherness that was no longer. There were days of sadness strung together and days without sadness. Time does what it does. Cliché is truth. Months passed, seasons changed, life goes on. Until I ran smack dab into Thanksgiving where confusion and disbelief found me again.
There was a truckload of memories of the togetherness along with the realization that the future would be something else. I felt like my heart was a tug-o-war rope with the togetherness on one end and newness on the other. There were only extremes. Everything was different. Little felt familiar. And oh, how I craved familiarity.
God Love my boyfriend. I know that helpless feeling of watching someone you love in emotional pain having no power to heal, shake, move, or remove. Thanksgiving came and went. It was lovely, lovely and new and different and hard. But somehow I knew it was the beginning of endings. There would never be another Thanksgiving like this one. And I wore that knowledge as armor loosely placed around my heart. Not too tight so as to block the flow of Love, just enough to keep the pain at bay through the holidays.
And then there were birthdays, and my birthday too. And now here we are, almost 365 days from the last days of the togetherness, and the sadness is here with me again. I suppose it was always around. Loud in the beginning, softening some, sleeping a little perhaps. Something taps it awake, things like holidays and birthdays and the anniversary of Daddy’s death.
There will never be togetherness like before. Maybe one day there will be a new togetherness. I’d like to think so, to hope so, for my Daddy’s sake, in his honor, for his joy. I miss you, Daddy. I was prepared to miss you though. It is the natural order of things. The togetherness though, I wasn’t prepared to lose that. That blindsided me, hurt me, changed me.
That is the way it is with great Love. And as I am often saying to those who are grieving, every tear shed in grief was born of Love. And so, I tearfully grieve the togetherness because I Loved it so.
It is my daily practice to take time to notice myself, my feelings, what I need, where Love wants to take me on a moment by moment basis. Today this practice led me to write the beautiful heartfelt healing piece you’ve just read. I was not at all conscious of the sadness today. More importantly, I had not yet realized that the Togetherness is what I have been grieving most.
Writing this piece provided me with deep catharsis. The simple act of writing it was a sweet and sacred release that offered me much relief from the burden of carrying such strong emotions. And having written it, I found myself so very tired. Sometimes it is not until we put something down that we have been carrying that we realize just how heavy it was, and can begin to feel our own exhaustion.
