Glimpses of Grace

Someone told me once that the most important thing to remember about the grieving process is that in order to heal, you have to be willing to sit with the sadness.  You have to do the very thing that’s hardest to do: slow down, get quiet within yourself, and allow sadness to sit with you awhile.

Sounds like really wise and sage advice, doesn’t it?

There’s just one leeetle problem with that advice, though and it’s this: Right now, that sounds like a pretty icky way to spend my time.

I don’t want to sit with my sadness. My sadness is a piss-poor companion and right now, I don’t want to even have a cup of tea with it, let alone sit with it. So that’s where we’re at. Teatime with sadness. No sitting.

I’m trying to be gentle with myself and tell myself that’s okay.

 

These first few weeks, I’ve gotten through my days by focusing on the most basic of tasks, and even those seem monumental at times. Breathing. Walking. Resting. Tending to the needs of animals and small human beings who need you. The days feel endless and the clock ticks slowly and I feel heavy and clumsy in my body and I think, “Jesus. Has it it really only been a couple of weeks?”

It hasn’t been all bad, though.

Most of it’s been bad–as in crush-me-with-a-fucking-anvil bad–but not all of it.

There have been moments, little snatches, small blinks of light where grace and beauty flash through. They burst through and startle me. They warm my bones and I can feel my heart beat again, and I’m reminded that I can’t close off, because it’s these glimpses of grace that heal.

Stay open, I remind myself. Good things will find you if you let them.

 

***

 

Readers, I’ll be gone for a few days. This past September, my husband bought me a whopper of a gift for our wedding anniversary: tickets to the Kentucky Derby, an event that’s always been on my “bucket list.”  We leave for the Bluegrass State tomorrow, which is absolutely the biggest gift of timing ever, because I don’t want to even think about Mother’s Day this year.  Of course, Mother’s Day cannot be avoided and it will come with a vengeance and mess mightily with my head and my heart, but I won’t have to sit with my sadness the entire weekend. Part of this weekend will be spent donning a silly hat and sipping icy juleps and getting lost in the beauty of animals built for speed. I’m so grateful for the distraction.

 

Thanks for being here, and for all of the grace you’ve shown me.