Kase has started going to a grief group for kids and at one of the meetings I met a lady who came with her son and daughter. She lost her husband to cancer just a few months before I lost mine. We had quite a bit in common. Her son was also 2 when his dad died. We talked about how painful the whole experience has been and how it’s alright to allow our children to see us weak and fall to our knees in utter pain as long as they also see us get back up. Deep grief is a physical pain you feel throughout your whole body. I have lost a lot of people that I love, friends and family; but it wasn’t until I lost my husband that I had the kind of grief I am talking about.
The pain was unbearable at times and I would literally sit on the kitchen floor and ugly cry while my little man would bring me toys and hug me to make me feel better. I couldn’t control my emotions and I started to have uncontrollable anxiety. The night was the worst; I was scared to go to sleep because what if I didn’t wake up again? This, the deepest layer of grief lasted for about two and a half months. It changed when I went to Saskatchewan for Andy’s service. It was then that I really realized I wasn’t the only one who was in a tremendous amount of pain.
I can clearly remember seeing Andy’s parents for the first time after he died. I looked into his dads eyes and knew in that very instant that the pain of losing his son was even deeper than my pain of losing my husband. I realized it doesn’t matter how old a child is when you lose them the pain is brutal.
After all the talk of grief the lady from the group asked me if I had found joy again. I told her I had but just in the last 6 months or so and only because I chose to. The truth is I drank every single day for over 3 years. Starting the day after my husband died. I still did all the things I was supposed to but the moment my obligations where done for the day I would pour a drink; usually 3 to 4 but sometimes more. Then I would go to sleep and do it all over again.
Finding joy meant I had to change all aspects of my life again and this included my physical and mental health. Joy was going to look different now and I had to find a new way to move through my day to day life again. I started to say thank you all the time. Thank you for my bed, my house, hot showers and especially hot coffee. I have always been really good at saying no, but I started to say yes again. Yes I’ll go for coffee; yes I’ll go for a walk, yes lets go camping and definitely yes to beach days. It also became about taking action. I stopped talking about what I wanted to do and just started doing it. Like this blog, starting my book and selling the last of my company. I am closing a chapter in my life and I am choosing to find real joy again.
Have you ever heard of Kintsugi? It’s the Chinese art of repairing ceramics dishes with gold or silver powders. The repairs are visible and very beautiful. It is believed that the breaks and repairs are part of an objects history. It tells a story of survival and perseverance. This is how I choose to look at myself. The breaks and repairs define me and make me who I am. They do not make me weak, they make me stronger. My job is to simply fill all the cracks with gold.
