It’s currently 12:23 am. The babies are asleep and I’m thinking about how grief is always louder when the world sleeps. When no one can hear you or see you. I remember when nights like this felt somewhat heavier, like no time had passed, like it just happened yesterday. A year ago I would have reached for the bottle of wine in my fridge and poured a glass to help me sleep. Maybe two, three or just the whole damn bottle, depending on how heavy the tears were. But now I just let the tears run, I watch old videos and well, now I blog. Isn’t it crazy how the same things can make you cry over and over again? The fountain of tears never ends. They can overflow way too generously on nights like this.
Whenever I hear of someone, I know losing their spouse my heart breaks all over again. It’s like I’m reliving the same emotions I felt on that day. Like a snooze alarm button on my heart. But instead of ringing it triggers a hurt, a pain that’s so familiar even when it’s not personally mine. I see the widower left behind and think they don’t even realise the magnitude of their days to come. That there are worse days than the day they left. It’s the days ahead where you have to learn how to live without them. Where everything is triggering you and you don’t know how to function. Early grief is a thing. The first year of grief is real. Doing the bare minimum seems somewhat impossible because it takes all the strength you have left out of you.
It’s been a huge season in the grief department, and I don’t even know where to begin. A couple weeks ago I witnessed my uncle transition from earth to heaven. It was the first funeral I had been involved in since James. I have been to a few funerals since then however there were many parts I avoided by choice because it was triggering. This time around I decided it was time to face the raw feelings up front even if that felt uncomfortable. I sat there in the hospital room watching my Aunty ever so slightly. I admired her strength to sit there in a room full of family, whilst knowing all she would have probably preferred was to bury herself in bed and to not speak. I watched as he arrived home in his casket and suddenly realised that I don’t even remember James arriving home in his. Maybe I blocked it out like many other moments during the funeral. I remember freezing in the car on the night of his family service and I didn’t want to get out after seeing so many people flock at the entrance. My sisters had to try and encourage me, but I didn’t want to. It took my cousin to come and sit with me until I finally gathered enough strength to get out and face everyone. I remember arriving at the funeral wake and I sat in my car with my sleeping toddler not wanting to show my face in a hall full of people. I wasn’t going to move, we just buried James, but my cousin came to the car and encouraged me to finish off the day. She had also lost her husband and knew every ounce of emotion I was feeling. So I got out, I walked into what felt like hundreds of people watching me and all I wanted to do was fall on my knees and cry but I just sat there.
I sit and listen to my sister cousin retell stories of her dad (my uncle) as she cries and I feel it. The pain, the missing, the loss, not having the strength to do the bare minimum because her whole world has switched no longer having her dad here physically. The wanting to avoid every crowded place so people don’t walk up to you and say, “sorry for your loss” even though people are paying their respects it’s another bullet to your heart confirming that they’re really gone. To have walked a similar path is one thing and then to relive it through people you love is also another. On this side of grief, you learn how to hold them differently, you stay so they know you’re not going to leave when things get rough or messy, you keep checking in, you keep showing up because this season right here is what we don’t forget. We don’t forget the ones that never left the ones that never stopped checking in and showing up even when you didn’t have the energy to respond to messages.
Today I write from a place of hope, a place where reliving every ounce of Pain I have ever felt in my loss becomes an opportunity to relearn how to shape the hurt grief brings to others by standing in the gap for them. The whole journey is hard, even more so the beginning. There is no returning to normal, it becomes a journey of finding a “new” normal without them. There is never enough time with your loved ones, and you can never love someone too much. So, if you ever have the opportunity to love on someone in all their messiness it is the greatest honour. You get to walk with them in the trenches and see them through on the other side.
If you are new to grief, you get to wear it how you see fit in this season. There are no words anyone can say to make you feel better but day by day you will learn that it becomes a part of who you are. There is no expiration date just like there is no expiration date on love. When that day comes when you cross over to the other side of grief, where you can give hope instead of being the one to receive it you will learn how to hold space for the next person grief touches. Just know that you are not alone and in your own journey you will continue to bless others.
With love Lata x
29 & Widowed 