I wrote my Mom an email today.
Yeah, you read that right. It just felt like something I needed to do.* I'm one of those grievers who doesn't care what the experts say is the normal time frame to grieve. And if someone tells me that it's been four years and that I should just get over it already, well, fuck 'em. If I need to spend a day talking to my mom out loud, I'll damn well do it. I'm not ashamed of looking like a crazy lady.
Only now do I realize what my Nina told me in the days after my mom's death is true--that grief never really goes away. At the time she told me that, I thought, Well that sucks. My second thought was, That can't be true. All the books clearly state that grief has a one-year average shelf life. Four years out now, and I can attest to the fact that my Nina was right all along. It never really goes away, does it? It just burrows in deeper, settling into your heart like a kitten in a bed of newspapers. There are certainly days when I don't notice it as much--when the sun seems to shine brighter, when I can laugh easily, when I can't recall all the details of an earlier life. And then there are the days like today, when I can hear her voice again just on the edge of my dreams, when memories of a day we spent together or a conversation we had come back with ringing clarity. Those clear memories are both a blessing and a curse. So I toss aside the books on grieving, and I stop listening to the experts, and I just go with that shit. I cry all day if I feel like it, and I talk to her, and turn up her favorite music and I write her an email. It hurts on a level I never could have imagined, but it feels a little like healing.
* No, I didn't get a response. Can you imagine if I did? That would have made the papers. Instead, though, a dragonfly whipped by my face about seven times, the most insistent, persistent, consistent dragonfly I've ever seen. He was all up in my grill. I'll take it.
Only now do I realize what my Nina told me in the days after my mom's death is true--that grief never really goes away. At the time she told me that, I thought, Well that sucks. My second thought was, That can't be true. All the books clearly state that grief has a one-year average shelf life. Four years out now, and I can attest to the fact that my Nina was right all along. It never really goes away, does it? It just burrows in deeper, settling into your heart like a kitten in a bed of newspapers. There are certainly days when I don't notice it as much--when the sun seems to shine brighter, when I can laugh easily, when I can't recall all the details of an earlier life. And then there are the days like today, when I can hear her voice again just on the edge of my dreams, when memories of a day we spent together or a conversation we had come back with ringing clarity. Those clear memories are both a blessing and a curse. So I toss aside the books on grieving, and I stop listening to the experts, and I just go with that shit. I cry all day if I feel like it, and I talk to her, and turn up her favorite music and I write her an email. It hurts on a level I never could have imagined, but it feels a little like healing.
* No, I didn't get a response. Can you imagine if I did? That would have made the papers. Instead, though, a dragonfly whipped by my face about seven times, the most insistent, persistent, consistent dragonfly I've ever seen. He was all up in my grill. I'll take it.
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