Six Year Old Grief

My daughter has been gone for more than six years now.  Six years. 

Remember how a child's birthdays go (or at least they used to)?  Big parties for the big birthdays...1, 2, 5, 10, 16, 18, 21 or something like that.  This year isn't a 'big' year and I guess that is good.  I have a few friends who have been to the bigger years.  I haven't asked how that goes.  I think 10 years will be a 'big' year.  My heart breaks for my friend who will have that anniversary soon.

Grief is different now.  The fog is gone, the jelly-thick air is gone, the crushing mornings are gone...I am grateful that these things are over for the most part.  I'm in a new era.  A different phase.  A part of grief that the writers don't write about as much.  A part that is unknown and but not scary; a part that is a little bit unpredictable and strange.  A part that other people will not, and can't be expected to, anticipate or be terribly compassionate towards. 

It doesn't spiral up or down or go in circles like I talked about in my early blogs.  It strikes like sky lightning.  Not the spears of lightning that strike the earth and start fires, but the big lightning that lights up the whole sky and is followed by rumbling, growling thunder.  And it comes from nowhere like a midafternoon storm in Florida.  One minute you are sitting at the beach, enjoying the sun, and 5 minutes later the thunder is rumbling and its time to pack up and run.

I'm a happy, optimistic person; always have been.  I'm not a bubbly, social, exuberant type...don't confuse the two.  I just have always been able to see the future in a good way and never anticipate anything bad happening.  I'm completely surprised that hasn't changed about me.  I still don't worry needlessly much.  I still don't anticipate bad endings for anything.  I am a happy person.  I can't imagine how someone who does not have that internal mindset goes through grief; I'm sure it is completely different than my journey.   I, long ago, stopped reading books about grief because it was pick and choose about what fit and what didn't.  It is a completely personal, individual experience.

A song, a picture, a smell, a sudden memory.  Something that happens all the time, but just this one time, it makes me cry.  Driving past a place I drive by everyday, but just this one time, it strikes with a memory. A song comes on the radio, but just this one time, the tears flow.  Someone sends me a message, but just this one time, I have a flash of anger.  Like sky lightening, it is ok.  It is safe.  Crying happens, but it passes.  There is no danger of falling into a place I can't get out of.

Today was a pretty typical day.  Today went like this:  Reading the essays submitted by the returning RA's, candidates for the Michaela Thomas Heart of the RA scholarship and thinking about her journey.  Eating a hot dog and remembering a little girl complaining that her hot dog was 'too flavorful' to eat.  Updating the pictures on the wall, changing out everyone for more current pictures, but leaving some pictures just the same.  Hearing a song on the radio that speaks to my soul and the soul of my daughter...because 'In my daughter's eyes everyone is equal'...a topic that has been very close to my heart and the heart of our country.  And just letting the tears flow, because that is the best way to let it happen.  For me.

But in my daughter's eyes, everyone was equal.  Everyone.  White, Black, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight, bi, transgender....it doesn't matter.  My daughter had no prejudice.  I would like to say that I taught her that, but that would be a lie.  It was just part of who she was.  Even when she was angry, during African American Studies (when the teacher told her to watch her hubris, but he really meant to be aware of her privilege) in college, when she felt she was being discriminated against, when she said she was becoming prejudiced because of the class...she wasn't really.  It wasn't part of her.  It wasn't someone she could be.  And I learned it from her.  She didn't learn it from me.  Sure I said all the right things and hopefully I did the right things, I tried anyway, but I learned how to really feel it and live it from her. 

We are here to love each other and help each other and if you don't want to be a part of that, stay out of the way and out of my sight. 

TimeHop retrospective

I have this little app on my iPad called TimeHop.  Mostly in the few years I have had it, it has been a fun but disappointing toy.  Every day the app gathers your posts from social media sites from years past and sends them to you to remind you of where you were and what you were doing on the same day in other years.  The disappointing part is that before this year, it didn't seem to go back more than 4 or very occasionally 5 years.   Every day I would look at it hoping to see some kind of gift of from the past, but nothing much came up except things to remind me that I live quite a routine life. 

This year the app is a little more powerful, but still disappointing.  It has been showing me 6 and occasionally 7 years old posts, but they are still only my posts and what I am noticing is that 7 years ago I was a queen of vague posts and at least this month (July) all of my posts from six years ago were vague, sad, or about my lack of sleep. 

All of these reminders of what I felt like, the things I said and did, have me thinking back at the newest, freshest grief through the eyes of experience and time.  It took me a long time to figure out why I couldn't sleep.  You would think that grief would have made me exhausted and I would fall in bed as soon as possible, but it didn't work that way.  I was exhausted, but night after night I sat up most of the night. 

I didn't know what I was waiting for.  I would just get more and more tired and my thoughts and my posts would get more and more jagged and crazy.  Logic would say that escaping into sleep would be the best and easiest thing to do.

I knew I wasn't doing myself any good, but I just couldn't make myself go to bed.  I would lay down for a few minutes and decide I needed to get back up.  I searched through Facebook and reread everything that people sent.  I didn't know what I was searching for or what I hoped would happen.  I posted weird random thoughts...many of which I deleted the next day because they were just too raw. 

I think if you had asked me then, I might have said I was waiting for Michaela to come home.  Or for something to happen to prove to me that it wasn't real.  Or for some sign of where she is now and that she is ok.  Maybe that was some of it.  I'm not sure now.  I still look for those things, and love it when I get a little surprise, but mostly I sleep ok. 

These clips don't show the time I posted them the way TimeHop does.  All of these were posted very late at night.  When I was up for no apparent reason, doing nothing, looking for something, and very, very alone. 

A few days ago I woke up very, very sad for no apparent reason (anniversary?).  And suddenly I knew why I didn't sleep for so long.  While it may be true that I was hoping for something or looking for something, I don't think that is why I couldn't sleep.  I think I couldn't sleep because I didn't want to wake up.

Waking up was the absolute worst part of my day.  I woke up feeling terrible.  My body felt heavy and pushed down by gravity.  I couldn't breath right.  I was looking directly into another long day of hopelessness.  The sadness of the morning was overwhelming.  And I had to get up and move.  People still depended on me to do things, be places, act like a human being.  That was so much harder than seemed possible during those first minutes of morning.  So, although I was exhausted, I felt better at night, when nobody expected anything from me and I didn't expect anything from myself, when the day was over, not staring at me daring me to get up and face it; although I was still sad at night, it was bearable.  And as long as I was awake, I wasn't waiting to wake up again to that same heavy weight of the expectations of a new day. 

I sleep better now, most of the time.  I don't wake up burdened by the impossibility of every day.   Those early days (years) of foggy thinking and walking through jello instead of air have mostly passed.  I will always miss my daughter.  I will always be looking for those little gifts...I even got one today.  I'm not writing this because I am sad; I am writing this because I am ok. 

But I wasn't. I wasn't ok yet except for vague, sad, and unhelpful posts, I tried very hard to just be the competent and happy person I had been.  I didn't give many people a chance to help me and I didn't give myself much time to help myself and unfortunately, the universe didn't give me much time to take care of myself before throwing more at me, but even with all of that things do get better and become manageable. 

Like that one legged woman on the bicycle, you adjust and learn to balance again.