I woke up early this morning to take out the garbage. You have to take it out between 4 am and 7 am. SHOVEL LIST.
Anyway, when I got back to my chair I hopped onto facebook. I had some catching up to do. I started to notice just how many memes there are..cute or meaningful or mean or philosophical, all of them meaning something to the poster. I try to treat them all with respect, whether I agree with them or not, because they are reflecting the poster's frame of mind at that moment.
This morning there was a meme posted by Kate, one of Bill's relatives. It was a post about grief. It was a nice little idea about grief never ending, just changing. The little ditty was nicely wrapped up with the idea that grief is the price of love.
Which is true I suppose. Maybe it never ends, just changes in intensity. And I suppose you can call grief a 'price' for feeling love for someone. But I think we complicate a very simple thing as we humans so often do. Grief is just missing someone...thats all. And of course as time passes and you get used to that person not being there anymore, grief becomes manageable.
Bill died nine months ago. As time has passed I have become more practised at missing him. Certain situations, certain 'things' make me miss him, in that moment, with more intensity. But as time passes those moments become further apart and less emptying.
And this is the time when a lot of people complicate this natural progression to becoming 'okay' with losing a loved one. We complicate the process by hanging onto those moments of missing them...for fear of forgetting.
So as that little meme said....'grief never ends'...if grief is the missing your loved one never completely going away...I am very okay with that.
On a related but different topic, I have noticed through the years as I have met people that have lost loved ones, they don't talk about them or mention their names. Obviously not ALL people do that, but so many do. I love to talk about Bill. I still complain about him, I still mention the things he loved, I still say his name all the time, I still tell the kids "your dad would have loved that', I still make fun of him, I sure don't eulogize the man! and I still love him. TTYL
Its wonderful that you love to talk about Bill. And of course you still love him. I think the reason so many people don't talk about lost loves ones is just because its hurts too much. Its a testament to your emotional health that you are able to keep Bill in your live, and others...by the stories that you tell and the references that you make to him.
ReplyDeleteI once heard someone say about the death of a loved one, "you never get OVER it, but you do get THROUGH it. And each of us grieves in our own individual way. Those memories eventually become less painful and more celebratory. The person may not be right here with us, but the energy of that love keeps going on.
ReplyDelete