The Carrying and the Collapsing

This is probably the most raw post I have ever written. I had a very bizarre experience the other day, and since I feel led to help others with me on this road of grief, I feel the need to talk about it in all honesty and vulnerability. Call this a disclaimer, or whatever you like, but this is me being real.

Saturday was a really rough day for me. It started out pretty normal–I went to our oldest granddaughter’s volleyball tournament, followed by our five year old granddaughter’s basketball game. Our son and daughter-in-law invited me to go to an early dinner with them after the basketball game, and I was happy to get to spend time with our oldest son and his family. We got to talking at dinner, and for the first time in a very long time, we began talking about my husband’s glioblastoma diagnosis two years prior, and his subsequent death nine months later of that same year. Don’t get me wrong, I will always show up to talk about our grief journey with our kids. Those are hard conversations, but they are the good kind of hard. Holding space for each other is one of the most important things we can do to help each other along. Add that to the fact that for the last few weeks, I had been feeling stronger and a little more in control than I have felt in over two years, and being able to talk to our son and daughter-in-law so openly and honestly about Leslie’s last days felt healthy and needed. Winner winner, chicken dinner, right?

Later at home, I was going back over my conversation with them in my mind, contemplating all the things that I realized I had forgotten about that tumultuous time in our lives. Over the last couple of weeks, I had been perusing different options that are out there for saving the posts I’d written on a particular health update web platform. Realizing how much I could not remember about those nine months of fighting for my husband’s life bothered me. I decided there was no time like the present to read those posts and comments from family and friends alike, and begin the process of saving them into a memorial keepsake. I spent the next two and a half hours being transported back to our path during those months, tearfully reminded of things I had not thought about in many months. By the time I looked up from my computer, I felt as though I was trying to peer out of the bottom of a pit. Waves of grief crashed in on me, and as I looked around the home that my husband and I shared together, so many emotions rushed at me at once. At the risk of sounding super dramatic, (something I loathe), the most noticeable feeling was a great intolerance to shouldering any more pain. An inability to even fathom standing up under the sorrow anymore. Did I mention that I had just spent the last few weeks feeling more normal than I had in years? Now I felt overwhelmed by grief—and the pain, the actual physical pain, was something I felt I could not even move out from under. I’m going to be honest here…I went to that dark place I’ve been to a few times during my grief…that black road where the sorrow feels too much and I have thoughts of not wanting to have to carry all of it any more. The realization that if C.S. Lewis’ quote, “Great grief exists because there was great love” is true, then I am in big trouble, because I love this man more than I have ever loved another human being in my life. “How am I here again? How have I undone months of work in therapy and in myself?” Reading over our story put me right back in that shaky, uncertain, scary place that I thought I had made it through. I felt distraught.

Here I am, twenty-four hours later, and these are the things I am turning over in my mind: first of all, the grief road is not linear, and there is no “one step forward and two steps back.” I don’t think there is any undoing, falling back a level, or regression. I think there are just good hard days and bad hard days, one step at a time, and sometimes those are baby steps. Sometimes, there are no steps…just standing still, in the same place, breathing in and out. To think that grief is something to get through and make it to the other side may be one of the biggest lies that keeps our society trapped in such a broken cycle of dealing with grief. There will be days that feel doable– going to the games, cheering on the sidelines, even having the hard conversations– and there will be days where your biggest victory is in the fact that you got out of bed and brushed your teeth. This is grief…sometimes it is ugly, but it is always real. 

Secondly, I still have work to do. As I’ve stated so many times before, God is sovereign, and His plan many times is not our plan. We are not here on this earth to be happy. We are here to glorify God and share joy with others. Don’t miss that…there is a big difference between happiness and joy. The first is fleeting and dependent on our circumstances. The latter is other-worldly, deep-rooted, and abiding, and what is going on in our lives cannot affect it. If we understand God’s sovereignty, we have joy, even in the midst of suffering. My husband was the greatest example of this that I know of besides our Lord Jesus. He was a very well known and beloved basketball coach who touched hundreds of lives in his 42 year career, but his greatest legacy was born in the way he dealt with his diagnosis and cancer battle. His faith never waivered, and he never questioned why this horrible disease had attacked him. Les told everyone what God had done for him, he fought the good fight, and he never lost his faith. I believe God wants me to tell Leslie’s story and continue to give God the glory. Our society needs to understand that we can hold joy and grief at the same time, in each hand. I also believe that God wants me to share my grief journey with others so that we know we are not alone, we are not going crazy, and however our grief road looks, we are doing grief well. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? This is something that has been hard for me to wrap my brain around, but if you are doing even a few of the things I listed in the above paragraph, you are doing grief well. Society needs to get better at helping the bereaved, and we must normalize being real with it instead of hiding behind facades of “being fine”. Many of us were raised in the generations that did not talk about hard things, and I have heard on more than one occasion about the “strong ones” — the ones who supposedly have it “all figured out” are the ones who do not talk about their sorrow or their lost loved ones. I don’t know about you, but being told there is only one right way to deal with grief and that way is to put my husband in a box on a shelf and power through my emotions leaves me feeling like a failure. And don’t get me started on the whole “healed” discussion. I do not care for that word when it comes to grief. I’m only in my second year of this whole grief thing, and I do not claim to have all the answers, but I don’t think we ever heal from losing someone we love. We just learn how to live with grief, and how to live without them.

Friends, I say these things with full belief and confidence in their truth — even hours before the carrying turned into collapsing. There are many moments when I’m convinced I must be the weakest person on the planet, that everyone else is somehow better equipped to handle the hard stuff. Surely no one else, in their right mind, sinks into the dark place and wrestles with thoughts like these. And yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are far more people than we care to admit who have been there — once, or even many times. Maybe I’m wrong and the population of Darksville is small, but if you’ve ever walked through a dark night of the soul, you are not alone. We can walk that black road at times and still carry the joy Christ plants within us. Joy doesn’t mean the absence of trouble, pain, or sorrow. It means we know this is not all there is — and this is not our home. I cling to that truth, especially when I can’t see in the dark, because sometimes clinging is the bravest thing we can do.

Lastly, self care is vital. Everyone has their own way of dealing with grief. It’s so important to learn what you need to regulate your nervous system. Our bodies respond to trauma by going into protection and survival mode–that is why grief fog, fatigue, insomnia, weakened immunity, digestive issues, and a myriad of other ailments and conditions are part of the process. It has taken me a while, but I am learning what I need to do to help myself regulate, process, rest, and basically be kind to myself. After a lot of “people-ing” and having a busy schedule, I know I have to take time by myself at home and let myself recharge and regroup. If I am very busy for a few days, I pretty much clear my schedule as much as possible and stay home for the next day or so if I can, keeping things very low key. I have learned that is what I need to do to be able to feel like some semblance of a normal person when I do have a lot of commitments or even just retaining friendships and relationships while I’m learning a new normal. You might be a person that needs to do the complete opposite…the point is, find out what you need to do to take care of yourself. Here is something else I have figured out: while it is so important to be present in your grief (our grief will find us if we are not), it is also good to let yourself “check out” mentally. Sometimes we need to turn off our brains for a little while. I find shows on TV that are light, funny, predictable, and do not require much problem solving or emotional investment. 

This grief thing is a lot…I’m just one person that is relatively new to this journey. I have very few answers, and there are days that the whole getting-up-and-brushing-my-teeth thing feels worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. I hope by sharing, you feel more normal and less isolated in this bizarre new life you are trying to navigate. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, or anything I can be praying for you in the comments below. We are members of a group for which we did not sign up, but we’re here all the same, and I’m holding this space with you. 

One Day Closer,

Heather

Isaiah 45:7-8 ESV

I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the Lord, who does all these things.

“Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain down righteousness;
let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit;
let the earth cause them both to sprout;
I the Lord have created it.

Romans 15:13 ESV

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.