It happened
in the middle of a drive thru at El Pollo Loco. One second I was pondering the
chicken verses pollo bowl.
The next
second I was a mess.
Right there
in the drive thru. I had a pain in my chest, my eyes burned, I started to cry
and I remembered why I wasn’t okay.
And that is
how it happens sometimes.
One minute you are fine, the next you are not.
For me, it was remembering a mundane task I used to do with someone I really cared about. And I realized I would never be doing that with them again. Ever.
The memory punched me in the gut and then left me
alone in the drive thru.
And it
wasn’t just the grief that hit me in that moment. It was the feeling that I was
somehow not doing it properly. That I was failing at grief.
Whether we
want to admit it or not, we put limits on people’s timelines to grieve. And
when they have passed that arbitrary limit, we subtly or not so subtly remind them that
their allotted time expired.
Which must
mean there are a lot of people out there crying in drive thrus.
I thought I
had been doing well. I was not holding things back. I had processed a lot.
Cried a lot. Mourned a lot. It felt like it was time to move on. I even started
to joke and dance and laugh again. I was doing everything I was supposed to do
to heal.
I thought I
was doing okay. And of course, I was not.
And it happens
just like that. You are fine and then you are not.
Grief hits
you without warning, rhyme or reason.
And it
finds you in places you don’t expect.
You may be going about your day. In the grocery line at the store. At work. At
school. Brushing your teeth. Trying to do something ordinary. Trying to make it
through a familiar task. Trying very hard to pretend everything is normal.
Which it isn’t.
I live in
California now and am terrified of earthquakes. (Please don’t get me started on
the would I rather be in a tornado/earthquake than vice versa debate.)
And
something that I learned about earthquakes is that they are deadly. Real
deadly. They literally rip the world apart.
And it
happens to people too. Our lives get ripped apart by events and change our
worlds.
And leave us in a crumpled mess.
But you
know what is sometimes more deadly then the actually earthquakes?
Aftershocks.
And they
happen anytime. Anywhere.
Same is true for grief.
You
remember a silly memory. You smell a familiar smell. A song comes on the radio.
Someone who looks similar walks by. Whatever the trigger, it happens.
Aftershocks:
moments that catch us off guard and stop us in our tracks.
Moments that jolt us
back to the time when we were going about our day and we blinked and then the
life we knew was gone.
What are we
supposed to do?
The
earthquake manuals tell us to duck, cover and hold on for dear life. Ride the
waves of emotion. Feel the feelings. And when the shaking stops, pick yourself
off and keep going.
But beware of moving too fast.
You know that scene in a movie where someone is obviously ill or wounded. They insist they are okay and they the stand up and immediately either fall over or faint?
It is comedic relief usually. We laugh at the person who insists they are fine when they are clearly not. I wish it were funnier in real life.
It’s not.
As my dear friend says, “Grief is terribly inconvenient.”
Moving on too fast from pain is like standing up to fast when you have just given a lot of blood.
You are going to fall back down.
You just are.
And you have to take a few steps back again before you can go forward.
But beware of moving too fast.
You know that scene in a movie where someone is obviously ill or wounded. They insist they are okay and they the stand up and immediately either fall over or faint?
It is comedic relief usually. We laugh at the person who insists they are fine when they are clearly not. I wish it were funnier in real life.
It’s not.
As my dear friend says, “Grief is terribly inconvenient.”
Moving on too fast from pain is like standing up to fast when you have just given a lot of blood.
You are going to fall back down.
You just are.
And you have to take a few steps back again before you can go forward.
Aftershocks. Our worlds keep getting ripped apart.
But so do other things.
Something else happened to me a few days after my incident at the Loco.
I was
sitting in my car again. Listening to music. (I won’t tell you the song because
it was too embarrassing. Think 80s)
And I
started to cry again. Not because I was sad, but because I was so overcome with
the beauty of the song. I felt like I heard it for the first time. I tilted my
head back and smiled and laughed and moved in ways that would definitely catch
the eyes of passing drivers.
Something
else happens when we wade through the mucky waters of grief. Not sit in the
sulk swamp. Or go through it walking backwards. Or try to run through it and fall
flat on our face. Or pretend it never happened. Or stand up too fast.
No, I mean
when you slog it out. Taking the steps to walk through it.
Every once
in awhile your heart will explode.
Sometime
with grief, sometime with joy.
This
surprised me. In the same way I wasn’t expecting chicken to make me cry, I also
wasn’t expecting music to make me weep.
But that is
exactly what happened.
Sitting in
the car again. Listening to a song that I loved.
I was
floored at how much I loved it. I mean. I really loved it.
The heart,
when broken, expands, and with it the capacity to love and to feel things more
deeply.
It blows
itself wide open if you let it.
It
explodes.
You can cry
and scream and ache and laugh and move and smile and smirk and dance and bleed
and tilt your head back.
You can see
how awesome the moon looks, or the waves feel or a symphony sounds.
You can
find it in the silence.
And love
gets better too.
Someone the
other day was telling me about their own struggles. I listened better. I cared
deeper. My heart was drawn in. I was with them.
I think our
hearts break to make room for more love.
I know that
is Hallmark cheesy. I know it. But
it is true.
To expand,
some things need to break. And shake. And get ripped apart. And explode.
And Michael
Bay has nothing on that.
And if I
can take any comfort in these awful aftershocks it is this.
To quote
Oscar Wilde: “ We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at
the stars.”
And they
are beautiful.
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