Okay, I'll say it: I am feeling much better. Not all the way better, but the place I have moved to is good. The air is clean and smells like damp grass and pine or, when the wind just is right, cow poo. We have been taking long walks and bike rides along the river and past fields of corn, eggplant, squash, cabbage... We are eating food practically right out the ground and have stumbled across the excellent local eggs, cheese, and apples crisps. There are wild turkeys in my yard right now, and the tops of the old growth maples across the road are starting to turn orange.
I can breathe here.
But I wonder how that other me would have felt about it. Would I have appreciated it this much? Or would I have been over-the-moon ecstatic, a height of emotion I just can't reach these days?
I feel better "considering," "in spite of," "relative to..." Grief is still my lens. I still evaluate my life in the context of heartbreak.
I've heard other writers and grievers describe their pain becoming, over time, a backdrop, a texture, a tone. I wish I was at that point - my grief draped behind me, over my shoulders, or woven into me. Right now it's still in front of me, blurring my periphery, giving me tunnel vision. It makes it hard to trust my perception and my own judgment. Am I really feeling better?
Today I have a post up at Glow in the Woods about this myopia. I still see loss everywhere, and I still don't know how to handle it.
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longing...
"...for the vanished girl her mother searched and visited all lands in turn. Where the girl was she knew not, but she reproached the whole wide world, and in chief the places where she had found the traces of her loss. She roamed the earth over in search of her daughter, by day and by night with torches, from sunrise until sunset, hour by hour. Bitter pain seized Demeter's heart, and she sped like a wild bird over the firm land and yielding sea, seeking her child. But no one would tell her the truth, neither god nor mortal men; and of the birds of omen, none came with true news for her."
- Ovid, Homer, others, me
- Ovid, Homer, others, me
pre-term labor awareness
gifts
3 comments:
I don't think my pain has become a backdrop. It feels more like a dormant volcano. Always there, sometimes belching a little smoke, and occasionally (and sometimes unexpectedly) erupting.
Loss still colors how I interact with other parents, my thoughts on knowing other people who are pregnant, hearing people ask "Do you have kids?" or "When are you having another one?"
When I'm angry or stressed or otherwise upset, I wonder if it just what I'm going through or if it all links back to grief—and does that matter?
Glad to hear you are settling in—was thinking of you the other day.
Two years out it is not my backdrop either. Loss still feels like the air I breath. It is everywhere and in everything. I wonder if that will ever change for me. I hope it does, I guess. But then I don't want her to feel so distant. And she is already starting to feel that way.
Loved the post at glow. Must get back there to commment.
xo
What a lovely post. I am finally on the 'other' side and i'll tell you that the grief is still with me - it's just not as overpowering as it used to be because I now have a source of joy. There is finally some sunshine in my life and it will find it's way to you in time as well. Beleive it.
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