Waves and Still Waters

You wonder to yourself, “HOW will I ever get through this? HOW will I be able to never see them again?”. And then I remember wondering thinking, why, why, why, whhyyy, whyyyy, WHY, WHY, WHYYYYYY, WHYYYYYYYYYYYY, and no answer ever came. Death is so final, no one on the life side of death is prepared, even if you thought death in this situation is what might be best. In many ways I wanted death to come to put my dad out of his misery, perhaps you are familiar with this line of thinking, but then you think I don’t want them to die, how can I possibly go through life without them? You revert to the laments that God can bring healing and restore them, but then I know and recognize that my dad is ready to die, he was completely at peace with the denouement of his life. You try and imagine again doing life without them. To be brave and have courage like they do, while lying on their death bed yet still figuratively walking “through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

There is this constant battle going on in your mind to release them and you try and imagine life without them and learn to move forward OR to stay in this prolonged purgatory state of your loved one, that is extremely burdensome, but it was part of the earliest process of grief for me. It’s painful. I recognized very early that for myself this was an undeniable, physical pain to start this process. When I was ultimately saturated in the finality of my dad’s passing, the moments after his soul had left his body, my body literally began to hurt, and ache, I had a very innate reaction. It’s like a part of your heart is completely exposed, its raw.

If you’ve experienced a death in your life of someone close to you, dealing with loss becomes a daily part of your life. At first, you’re completely overwhelmed by the ocean of grief, the unexplainable sadness and heaviness of this death. You’re drowning on a moment-by-moment basis, you’re kicking to get to the surface, but the weight of the grief is holding you under. Imagine a pool that has those plastic covers on, death is that cover, and you were in the pool just floating on your back and that cover starts rolling over the pool and you’re caught underneath, it’s THAT heavy, the grief.

It can eventually progress to getting your head above water, that’s the hour-by-hour grief, you can catch a few breaths. Think back to taking swimming lessons and how you learned to tread water, moving those arms around and kicking your legs like you’re riding a bike, it’s exhausting and can look quite awkward but you’re keeping your head above water, I equate that to the days and weeks post death. You’re getting more comfortable with the water; this is months into your grief. You allow your muscle memory to take over and you stretch out your legs and arms and start arcing your arms to propel you forward and you start to flutter those legs to work in tandem with your arms to allow you to move. You can see one of those lovely chair floats in the distance, with a cup holder for a refreshing drink to enjoy while you’re lounging in the water. You’re getting closer, you have the strength to get on the chair, because you’ve been in the water so long flailing around at first, but a metamorphosis occurred, and you turned into a graceful swimmer, and you were able to conserve energy for the chair that you saw in the distance. The lounging chair represents a year or years. Now this isn’t to say that you won’t fall off this chair, there are waves, you’ll get wet, mess up your hair; but now you know you can find a place to get back up and rest and learn to manage the waves of grief that will inevitably come. After dealing with the waves over and over, and you’ve climbed back on your lounger for the thousandth time and finally found your comfy spot once again, the sun begins to shine, you’ll put your sunglasses on, yah that perfect pair you like, the water is sublime, and all the sudden you’ll notice that there’s a floating tray going by with your favourite snacks and drinks on it and you’ll recognize that you can learn to be comfortable here for a long while…the still waters.