My son died today… This wasn’t the first time, though. I initially lost him almost 3 years ago, and when the news first reached me it literally sent me leaning on a wall for support, as I was leaving a meeting and heading back to my office. I received the bone crushing, heartbreaking call – and my unsuspecting body fell as the vicious tidal wave came and leveled me.
I still remember the dizzying flood of thoughts and questions and emotions as it all hit; my brain trying desperately and unsuccessfully to keep up with everything coming in.
There’s no way to adequately describe those next few frantic, disorienting seconds and the hours and weeks that followed. And yet for those of us who have lost someone we so love, it’s a valley of grief that has no distance or time limit.
The thing about grief that people rarely tell you is how it repeats itself, how cruelly it cuts you again and again and again. You can go days, sometimes weeks feeling as if you’ve gotten the upper hand – that you’ve made some kind of peace with it all, that you’ve finally truly accepted the reality of the situation. Life can even seem quite normal, and you can foolishly find yourself genuinely believing you’ve turned a corner.
And then it happens.
Something randomly trips that invisible land mine buried just beneath the surface of your daily routine; a song or a scent or a date on the calendar, or worst of all seemingly nothing, and you feel like the one you love has just died—again. The pain of separation comes as violently and clearly as it did in that very first second and you find yourself reeling once more.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve relived my son’s death since that first horrible June morning, and yet the fierceness of the feeling never dissipates.
Though it’s been nearly three years, my mind still struggles to make sense of it all. It is as if sorrow reboots itself in my heart – another brutal wave of grieving. And yet the worst part of all of this, is that although I feel well right now, I’m quite certain that it will happen again.
Grief yields a repeating pain; one that continues to do its invasive work within us for as long as we our breathing.
Miss you Scot! Happy Birthday.