I read Kelley Lynn’s blog the other day, and felt immediate connection as she wrote about time passing, and 9 years later and Don and grief and what do you do with it or about it after a certain point? What feelings are evoked as the years pass?
I’m at 7 years, and it will remain at 7 years no matter how many years pass since Chuck’s death.
My heart won’t bear the passage of more years, more time, and I don’t much care to count them.
In 20 years if someone asks me how long since Chuck’s death, my response will be 7 years.
Because, really, what does one do with grief, with memory, with time…after a certain time?
What more does one say after the first few years when all the words have been spoken, even if people keep their ears and hearts open to your expression of emotion?
How many ways are there to say it’s still unreal but too real?
How many words are there that fully express the level of soul crushing loneliness?
How do we say, after some years have passed, that those memories that hurt and make your heart ache but are also gold bits strewn behind you, grow dimmer and dimmer and that realization sets me into a panic?
How do I explain that I’m not certain but that our time together might have been merely a dream on my part brought on by an active imagination…knowing it was real but maybe I’m crazy and it wasn’t?
What the hell does healing even mean? I hate that word and never use it, honestly. It isn’t relatable to me but I know it’s popular in the grieving community.
I wonder…does it mean that slicing pain in my chest is no longer chopping away and now I’m simply numb, even with the awareness that it’s all brimming right there under the surface of my skin? Is that considered progress?
Does it mean that I’m a master at pushing boundaries and comfort zones and I’ve created a whole life for myself even if the longing for Chuck in my heart is my very heartbeat?
I have no answers anymore than I have questions.
What I do know is that the reality of who Chuck was, who I was with him, who we were together, fades more each year, and I shudder at the reality of that.
I know that grief hasn’t become easier so much as it has become a familiar companion. I picture a witch with her cat when I think of this…cats were known as familiars. Maybe I need to develop that concept for myself. If I create grief as an object, an animal, etc, what would that look like to me?
Interesting idea, that.
What does grief look like to you, I wonder, if you were to see it as something tangible?
Grief certainly isn’t anything that frightens me, but putting a face to it…giving it a name…hmmm.
Looks like I have some cogitating to do this week.
Anyhoo, here’s a picture of me with a handsome, vibrant, passionate, intelligent man who may or may not have been the leading man in a spectacular dream I once dreamed. I know he wasn’t, but maybe he was? 
See how confusing this is?
