Integrate grief, not overcome it.

One month ago this nightmare began. I can recall every piece of that day. I replay it every Friday, and now I’m replaying it on a monday because that’s the mark of a month. Wednesday will be a month since I said goodbye. Then, Friday will be the 5 week mark of his shooting. Sunday will be the 5 week mark of saying goodbye.

And on and on and on.

There may be a day when I don’t count every week. Maybe I won’t be saying “87 weeks without him”. I can’t fathom that being the case, but I have to believe it. For my own sanity. I have to believe it gets better. No, not better. More bearable.

When I was in the first week or two of this journey I remember desperately looking for people who have experienced sudden, traumatic, out of order loss like this. I needed to hear them say “oh yes. it gets better. You can’t imagine how. It doesn’t feel possible. But honestly, I’m so much happier now than I’ve EVER been in my life”.

Of course I knew this couldn’t be. But I just NEEDED to hear it. Like my survival depended on it. I still think my survival depends on it. I have to know this gets easier, whatever that means. But no one said it gets easier or better. They said I will always miss him. I will always long for him. I will always wish this had never happened, no matter what good or beauty comes into my life. It’s hard to hear that. And in the mind numbing place of that early grief I couldn’t even comprehend it.

I don’t think my grief gets easier. I get stronger. And it absolutely sucks that I have to. By all accounts, I just wish we could go back. I liked who I was already. Getting stronger does not make it worth it.

Here’s what I think a month in….

I miss Sayed more today than I did a month ago. I miss him with everything in me. My life is going on and I don’t like moving farther away from him. I don’t want it to be Fall. I didn’t want school to start. I don’t want Sunday to come and have to start another week without him. I miss him. The love has not changed. The missing him is an ache I can’t put into words. And I know I will long for him always.

I don’t think the pain goes away. I think in fact I have to find a way to honor it. I can’t push it away or hate it. Pain is not the enemy here. Now as for the suffering, I do believe (hope) that will ease. At least the 24/7 unrelenting suffering. The feeling that I’ve survived one horrible moment and my reward is to arrive at another impossible one. My month has been made up of impossible moments that I have chosen to survive and push through. It’s no way to live. It’s just the reality of grief in these early stages. I can get on a plane by myself right now. I couldn’t do that a month ago. Sometimes I go several hours without crying, and then the next I’m pulling over on the side of the road because the sobs are too big to drive. I think that’s different than a month ago. But very early on I realized that the goal is not to get through this. There isn’t a finish line or a prize. The grief and pain will always be there in this form or maybe different forms. I don’t know. I know will always miss Sayed. I will always grieve the life we should have had together and wonder what that life would have looked like. I don’t get to defeat grief.

Death is strange. It’s life altering the way birth is, but with birth you would never expect someone to move on from it. You would know that their entire life is changed forever. Who they are, how they love, their daily actions, their tasks, their exhaustion, and a million other things. When new life is here we expect someone’s life to change forever. Why would it be different with death?

I think because grief is messy and uncomfortable. People want to fix it. They want me to smile again. To laugh again. I get so many messages when people see me smiling “oh thank goodness you’re smiling. So good to see”. I get it. People want me to be happy. People are used to seeing me happy. I’m a bubbly person. I’m not a bubbly person now and my grief will forever change me. Maybe I’ll be that person again, maybe I won’t. I’m changed by his death.

It’s easy to think there are two options - this idea that we have to hold onto our love for a person and are doomed forever, in the darkest pit of depression and sadness because we love them and will grieve their death always. OR, maybe we can “move on” we will find something else that we love as much and that will fix the problem and we can be happy and have a purpose. I think the actual hard work of grief comes from finding how the two collide (also, I’m reserving the right to be totally wrong here. I’m only a month in):

Megan Devine talks alot about this in her book “It’s ok to not be Ok”:

“What I’m proposing is a third path. A middle way. Not on, not off. A way to tend to pain and grief by bearing witness…by standing there, right there inside this obliterated universe. By somehow making a home there. By showing that you can make a life of your own choosing, without having to pick one thing over another: leave your love behind but be “OK”, or retain your connections and be “stuck”. Finding that middle ground is the real work of grief….each one of us has to find our way into that middle ground. A place that doesn’t ask us to deny our grief and doesn’t doom us forever. A place that honors the full breadth of grief, which is really the full breadth of love.”

Truth is, a month in I’m not there. I’m suffering. I miss him. I hate this life I’m living right now. I also am making it. I’m surviving and I’m really proud of that for now.

I’ve come to really appreciate the people that let me be in this place for now. as dark and uncomfrotable as it is to see (trust me it’s more uncomfortable to live it). Of course there is the opposite too. The people that tell me they just can’t wait to see me be happy again. The people that say I’m mentally pretty far gone. So many comments about “at least you weren’t married” “at least you weren’t together longer than you were” When all i wish is that we had more time before he was taken from me. So many comments about “at least you weren’t pregnant” Sure, rationally I can see your argument. maybe. But rationality is not something super available to me in this pain. Every day I have wished that I was pregnant and I had that piece of him to love and care for forever. So these comments don’t help. In fact, let me just tell you please NEVER begin a sentence to a griever with “at least”. While it’s probably coming from a place of wanting to help, all it tells us is we should be a little less sad. There’s not a bright side guys. I’ve looked.

But for the most part I’m making it because 1. I’m strong. 2. I am choosing to. 3. the love of people. My home is full of flowers. My coffee table is full of cards and books. My inbox is full of messages (please don’t stop. sometimes those texts are the exact thing that get me through that impossible moment). There is food in front of me. I truly don’t know how I would survive this without the love of all of you. I know Sayed is so thankful for people loving me the way he would be loving me. I sure am.

One month. I miss him more than ever. I imagine that will grow and grow until the day we are reunited. Thank you for stepping into this darkness with me. It is far less lonely with you here.