Surfacing
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In the haze of our hospital stay, I have a clear memory of our favorite night-time nurse talking to us about how grief comes in waves. I remember the doctor reiterating something similar after he said a prayer over our brain-dead baby on Good Friday.
We’re going on eight years now from our loss and the truth in that statement has been proven time and time again.
I can recognize the top of the wave. Enjoying being out in nature on a daily walk, laughing at the goofy things my six-year-old says and does, feeling grateful for my little family who is pretty happy most of the time. All of these see me paddling along the top of the wave.
But as waves do, it will start to crest a little too high, making my happiness feel a bit wobbly, and the next thing I know, crash. Down I go.
When the wave crashes, I’m assaulted with memories—images of the hospital, my little boy covered in wires and unmoving, giving the funeral director the outfit we wanted him to be cremated in. As the wave is crashing down, it seems unlikely that I’ll ever be able to surface again, with the water pounding down on my head.
But eventually, I do surface. And the next thing I know, another wave is coming along for me to ride and I feel calm once again.
I think the hard thing about waves is that they never end. It is always up and down, up and down. Sometimes the ride up is longer and sometimes I can’t get my head above water for a long time after the crash. But that’s grief. It’s constantly there whether the seas are calm with lazy little waves or stormy with monster-sized ones.
I think that over the last few years I have gotten better at just floating along and letting the waves move me around. They’ve seemed gentler and easier to come back from most days. Or maybe I’m just better at accepting the crash when it comes, knowing that I will rise back up to the surface again.
How are you managing the waves these days? If you’ve been here a while, have the waves become gentler over time? If you are new here, how does it feel to imagine a gentler future? What do you need from others when the big ones crash and you feel held under?