December already. The cold breeze that touches my cheeks as I walk Seamus, Fergus gone now, is like a knife to my very core. An opening of the memories stored there from this very time one year ago, two, even three years ago now. On Christmas Eve 2018 my father was admitted to hospice care at home with a prognosis of only a few weeks to live. For the next two years, not three weeks, my siblings, my mother, and the incredibly gifted hospice team we were and are blessed with cared for him day and night. We each brought our own abilities and gifts to the care of my father. Two years took its toll on all of us each in different ways although that will be another story-or even the next book. But today I am struck by the way a breeze with a familiar sting, and the smell of smoke from the neighbor’s fire, immediately transport me to last year. You’d think this wouldn’t take me off guard, knowing as I do that the body holds our memories and that smells, sights, sounds, all the senses bring back memories faster than anything else. Not to mention last weeks’ Thanksgiving holiday, the first in my life without him. His chair at the table glaringly empty. Yet with all of that, I stand in my yard and in my parent’s kitchen making lunch for my father or cleaning up some accident or other at the same moment.
That’s grief though, isn’t it? And somehow no matter how much I know, or how many years I have worked with my own and others’ grief I am still surprised for a moment when grief reaches up from my very core and grabs hold again. Every time I am reminded that what we know about grief and how we experience grief are two very different things. I have a friend that I talk with about how often we underestimated the impact that significant dates, events, or even ordinary days have on our grief. Surprised when grief takes us to our knees and we laugh and cry about it all. She tells me she could never work with grief as I do, says grief is my curse and my gift-always has been. I think maybe she is right. I suppose this direction my work htttp:/integratedgriefworks.com is taking then is no surprise, and yet like the startle that comes when grief takes hold, It surprised me when I suddenly knew in every part of my being that this is my way forward. The work I am and will do with others, and my writing will follow this path. I hear some of you laughing at the fact that I say doing this work now surprises me, but as I have said in past posts, it takes the proverbial Mack truck for me to ‘get it’ sometimes.
As I make my way back into the warmth of my home, the sting of sadness still acutely palpable, I understand that the coming weeks will no doubt hold intense sadness, a deep ache of longing, and even a few stories with laughter. I understand too how many others are wandering through these days in their own grieving. Maybe the loss of a loved one, that empty chair at the table, the loss of a cherished pet, job, home, health, relationship, the number of losses too great to list, but too important not to notice. I am noticing and will notice as we make our way through this neverending journey of life, love, and loss, together.
