Grief–A Candid Post

 

Once a person has experienced intense grief that grief is forever a part of your life.

 

to some degree.

 

Just when you think you’ve “gotten over it” or dealt with it for the last time, something happens and it sneaks  up and bites you from behind again.

 

The tears flow unexpectedly.

 

This week Jason and I attended a “celebration of life” for the mother of our fire chief.  Her four granddaughters sang her favorite song – Lean On Me.  It was beautiful and fun!  We cried and cried as they sang.  Her husband of almost 41 years shared about their early years together and how important their children and their grandchildren were to her (and to him).  We cried as he shared, as he tried to keep it together, as if any of us expected him to “keep it together”.

 

Jason and I have never lost a spouse, so in that we don’t understand his loss.  We have lost a baby son, and in that we understand loss.

 

hopes

and

dreams

 

This has been a tough year (2010 and early 2011) for our community, for our department, for our family.  Every time someone around us is grieving, we remember our own grief.

 

Not as intense as we once did.

 

We came home from the celebration full and tired.  Full of the love shared by our fire department family.  Full of their grief and our own.  We came home exhausted.

 

Grief is exhausting.

 

I could sleep all day.

 

And for that I am so thankful that when my grief was most intense, that God had given us two precious little girls who needed us to keep on keeping on.  Just as our fire chief’s family have little ones to help them carry on.

 

The circle of life?

 

I don’t know.  I just know that

 

once a person experiences intense grief, it is with you forever.

 

Or at least that’s what it seems like to me.

 

Unexpected grief.

 

 

Still diggin',