A Smiling Young Widow

I want to be over this. I’ve put in the work. Now can’t I just be healed up and back to normal? One of the hardest parts of my second year of grief has been crashing into this idea over and over again. This is not short-term. Tom is still dead and he’s going to stay that way for a long time. So, this grief thing is here to stay.

I know I can look better on the outside. I’ve learnt more and practiced how to carry this. There’s lots I have more of a handle on, most times. But there’s also so much inside that is unrecognizable and much of my old life I grieve for daily. I cannot rationally wrap my head around how I still need to convince myself this is the reality I am living in – Tom is not coming home.

I’ve had a similar dream over-and-over where Tom shows up – he just casually walks through the front door each time and calls my name. He’s in his cozy black and white plaid shirt. High vis pants. A baseball cap. Like he’s coming back home after a shift on the road. Scruffy beard. That grin that extends all the way to his twinkling eyes and makes me smile too. Tom comes in and has some (ridiculous) explanation of where he’s been. The last time he was just released from a stint in prison and sorry he hadn’t been allowed to make any calls. Or when he told me how his whole death had been faked for some big crime ring thing. Another time he had just run away for a bit to see how it felt to have no more adult responsibilities, but he didn’t realize just how much he would miss me so decided to come back. I’m always so happy to see him. Like I can feel that big enveloping hug of our reunion and the relief it brings, but then it changes. I tell him how hard it has been on me, and well Tom this isn’t really fair that you can just come back like this. I’ve had to do a lot of work grieving for you, and it’s not really ok to just waltz back in here. Then I wake-up and really wish I could have that hug.

“I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions.
That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.”
– Neil Jordan

It’s a pretty constant self-talk conversation I have these days, “you gotta take the hustle culture out of grief”. I had seen that line on Instagram awhile ago and it stuck with me. Grief isn’t something you can rush through and get to the other side of (and that itself needs to be grieved too). 

I’ve definitely tried on the idea that I could get to an end. That’s what our hustle culture tells you. Stay busy. I just had to make a plan, work through it. Read all the books. Do the therapy. It’s all mindset. You just make yourself a list and set yourself to do it, boom success. As a previously very driven and organized person, trust me if there was a road map of just check all these boxes and you’re good? I’d have crushed it. I kind of have crushed what is supposed to help, and I mean it has – like don’t bury yourself in the sand, feel all the feelings, the only way through grief is through it, take the time to actively mourn.

I’ve also had to learn that this grief journey doesn’t actually have an end point. I had to adjust some of my own “treatment plans” to just be ok slowing down, leaning into what I need each day. Sometimes sitting in stillness outside and sometimes totally checking out with a mindless TV show. I’ve had to learn to take the hustle culture out of grief. It’s an act of rebellion in our busy-loving Western world to slow down.

I read Eat, Pray, Love years ago and learnt the Italian phrase “dolce far niente” – the art of doing nothing. It really is an art to be able to sit in nothingness and it takes practice. And the art of doing nothing while grieving is a whole other kind of challenge. 

(Part 2 to follow…)