Grief never ends....

For those of you who know me, I'm a planner, a do-er, a person who just gets things done grief laughs in the face of all of that. You don't make time for it in your schedule, plan days to just dedicate to it- Grief does its own thing. It takes the days or moments that it wants, sometimes a gentle wave that just reminds us that it is there, sometimes a wave that engulfs us, leaving us tumbling in its wake and trying to right ourselves again.

The first year was a blur. I like to say, “keep the lights on”. I did so many things to distract myself and my kids that year. The second year, reality set in for me and I walked around saying in my head “this really happened”. My children surprisingly were still doing OK, so I kept pushing forward. In any other instance, time and distance can make us stronger, can heal the wounds- we hear that all the time. When you lose your center, that stops being true. The reminders of that loss come at strange times and don't always hit the losers in the same way on the same days. On any given day, our squad of four is only as strong as our weakest link, and we have struggled mightily as each one of us has fallen into pockets of loss.

Covid compounded that, stealing the distractions of school, and friends, and the LIFE that can keep us from thinking about the loss of life that still affected us so deeply. Our foundation started to crack. I believe reality truly started setting in for my children.

We are now into our fourth year and we all are deeply feeling the gaping hole in our home in many different ways. I have had to handle things alone that have broken my heart into a million pieces. It may sound odd, but the reality is that we are still grieving into our 4th year. The 3 of us lost our “person”. He made things better when they were hard. He made things fun when we were bored. He made us smarter with all his knowledge. He simply made our lives easier by just being. I was so determined that things would get better each year and it is so much a part of me to attack a "project" and "see it through" that I have been bitterly disappointed. I realize now that the goal I should have set for us is not to live through this, but to continue finding ways for the four of us to live with this. I am as determined as ever to be - daily- what my kids need to grow along with this loss and come out stronger, knowing that grief will always be along for that ride.