Pull up a chair

Sometimes people talk about “getting over” grief, but I don’t think that’s really possible.

When someone we love dies, grief doesn’t knock politely. It simply moves in. It sits in every room of the house. It waits at every holiday, every birthday, every empty chair. For the rest of our lives, it can feel like an intruder determined to make itself known.

Grief usually isn't sadness. For me, grief is a wicked, sprawling monster. From the very start I believe I told a friend that I would never feel any worse, but I would never feel any better. I have had lots of sweet counsel, and one sweet mama who lost her daughter way too young told me that I would never be myself again. She said I would learn to be a different person.

Grief was an attack. In reality, grief is still an attack.

Grief doesn't come carrying a handkerchief. It comes carrying weapons. It feels as though it has me surrounded with pitchforks and spears, slashing at my heart, opening wounds that never have time to heal before they are torn open again. Every memory becomes another cut. Every sunrise reminds me of another day to fight through without my son. Every ordinary sound has the power to ambush me. There are mornings when simply waking up feels like losing him all over again. I usually feel less like a grieving mom than a hostage.

I sense that grief has me locked in a cage with no door I can find. It deprives me of peace, steals my appetite for living, and whispers that nothing beautiful will really ever exist again. It isn’t content merely to make me cry. It seems determined to wear me down until there is nothing left of me but the memory of the girl I used to be.

For a long time, I believed my only choices were to fight grief valiantly or be defeated and killed by it.

Lately, however, another revelation has been quietly growing.

I am learning that grief isn’t leaving the building. What if, instead of trying to throw it out of the house every morning, I simply acknowledge that it has become a permanent resident?

Not a welcome one.

But a resident nonetheless.

So instead of meeting grief at the door with another battle, I imagine saying, 

“Well… You’re here again. Pull up a chair.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee. Let’s sit on the porch together. Let’s watch the trees. You don’t have to torture me today. You don’t have to reopen every wound, but we can simply remember.

“We can remember my daddy’s insulators and the delight they brought him.

“We can remember my mom's celebrations and ordinary afternoons that never seemed extraordinary until they were gone.

“We can remember Gerred, not only in the moment I lost him, but in the thousands of moments I was blessed to have him.

“We can remember without being destroyed.”

As I have thought about this, I have realized something else. Grief didn’t move into my house alone. Love came with it. There is no grief without love. The deeper the love, the more brutal the grief. For a long time I only noticed the grief because it was the loud one. Grief demands attention. It fills every room with its dark sadness. Grief is loud and greedy… and ugly and thoughtless.

Love is quieter. Love is the beautiful inhabitant.

Love simply sits beside me. The truth is…  

I would never choose to love less just so I could hurt less.

Not for my parents. Not for my grandparents. Certainly not for my son. If the price of loving them deeply is carrying grief, then I would rather carry grief than erase a single memory.

Maybe that is what grief really is. Love with nowhere earthly left to go.

So maybe grief and I can learn to share the same porch. Some days we’ll sit in silence. Some days we will smile at an old memory. And some days we will cry. And perhaps, over time, grief will stop feeling like a stranger who invaded my home, and grief will become a quiet companion who reminds me, day after day, that I had people worth missing. Asking grief to pull up a chair is not a pleasant image. After the battle, it’s an act of quiet courage. To me, this is what survival is really about.

Sometimes people tell me that I am doing better. It’s OK my friends think that, but I don’t believe that can ever happen. I’m slowly learning to become a different person.

Although I have an uninvited heart guest, he is not alone.

A sweeter fact remains. Grief didn’t just waltz in and steal my happy life, and it can’t destroy a single memory. I am learning that Love never moved out.