Grief,Healing, and Time

Today someone I loved died.  I can’t believe it.  I don’t believe it.   I won’t believe it.  Family comes, Friends come.  The phone keeps ringing.  The doorbell rings again and again.  The ringing seems far away.  I hear it, but I seem unable to answer.  My legs won’t move.  My feet won’t move.  I am glued to the chair.  Others answer for me.  They seem to know – I don’t remember how.

Tomorrow comes. I didn’t want it to ever come.  I wanted to go back to the time before you died.  There, I said it.  You died.  Does that make it true?  There must be some mistake, I tell myself.  Maybe this is just a bad dream.   If only someone would wake me up.  When people ask me what they can do for me, I try to tell them the only thing I want is you.  They look sad, they gently shake their heads, they hug me and still you’re not here.

Your funeral is over.  Everyone says I did so well.  I hardly cried.  Don’t they see I can’t cry, not yet.   “She is in shock”, I hear someone else say.  “Give her time, that’s all she needs.”  I wonder, Can it really be that simple?  If it is, I just want to run through time, however much time it takes to get to the place where I don’t hurt so bad, don’t miss you so much.  But no, I can’t do that.  Even if I could, I would only be farther from you.  My heart cannot bear that.

 Days pass.  Tomorrow will be one month since you died.  I wonder how I can just skip that day.  I am afraid of it; of reliving every single detail of your death, knowing that one month ago you were here with me and my world was okay.  Now I have no world.  Everyone keeps telling me that I just need to make a new world.  But I liked my old one.  I never asked to have it taken from me.  Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how to start over.   I don’t know where the beginning of that world is, or how to get there.  Everything is so hard and makes me so tired. I just want to stay in bed.

 Days pass and turn into weeks.  I am stuck in a world foreign to me, wondering where you are and how you could have left me.

I force myself to go through the motions of living and caring for others.  They don’t seem to notice it’s just pretend and I am the star of the hardest role of my life.  If only they had just an inkling of the place I am in – of my fractured and broken heart.

 I never used to read the obituaries.  Now I feel compelled to do so.  I feel like a kindred spirit to others who must also travel the road I am on.  I still feel so alone.  Now they will feel alone too.  I feel like I should say something to them, but I do not know them; I only know their pain.

 Months continue to pass.  I am back at work, back in church, getting my hair done.  It all still seems strange, different, and doesn’t matter like it used to.  Friends call.  Sometimes I say, “Yes, I will go to dinner.”  Other times I say, “Thanks for calling, but not today.”  Many days it is still easier to just be alone where I don’t have to hide my tears when they come, where I can talk to you and not feel strange, where I can just be however I am that day and not try to fit into the place others have carved out for me.

 Finally, one day I surprise myself.  I am humming a tune.  For a little while, I feel lighter.  I almost smile.  I begin to judge myself.  What’s the matter with me?  How can I be even a little happy when you’re not here?  But then I hear your voice in my head, or is it in my heart – the place where you live, saying you are glad that I am humming; glad I can smile, encouraging me to live again.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do both.  But later that day I find myself humming again, and I smile, knowing that I am going to be okay.

Deb Kosmer

© 2009