Grief makes you feel crazy.

These two journal entries were written 5 days apart, illustrating grief’s constant ebb and flow, the impermanence of any one emotion, and the myriad of feelings that arise when a loved one dies, including heartbreak, anger, guilt, shame, gratitude, hope, acceptance, shock, confusion, fear, loneliness, and many many more.  In short, grief makes you feel crazy.

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March 1, 2015
I am tired today but still feeling grounded in life/George/death and still feeling calm.  God, I miss you George, so much so much.  I would do anything to hold you, to see you hold and giggle with your daughter, who is one insanely beautiful and amazing human.  We really made a magical creature and the world is a better place because Nova is in it.  She brings so much joy to people’s lives with the power of her smile.

I know you are not here with us, at least not in the physical sense.  I know you are somehow a part of the greater consciousness though, that you have awareness of my continued existence and of Nova’s existence; that you love and care for us and want to protect us.  I know you wish us love and joy and happiness, and I feel...I hope...you are at peace.  I am getting there.  

It’s a challenge to reconcile the life I just had, that I remember so vividly, so recently, with this new life without you.  I feel like a very different person now, and in many ways I can’t relate to the woman who married you and carried your child.  She was spoiled and privileged and sheltered and blind.  She was self-involved and self-interested and took what she had -- the fortune of love, partnership, a future family -- for granted.  She was afraid, but not of anything real.  She was petty.  I am still some of these things, but I sure have a greater appreciation for the present moment and what is good that exists now.  Impermanence is constantly on my mind.  I really wish I’d been able to be happier when I had everything in the world that I could possibly want.  I wish I’d worried less and played more and put my self interests aside to love you more.  Because you really deserved to be loved.  I wish I’d been more attentive and less absorbed in my own dramas.  I wish… I’d really really really known how fortunate I was to have it ALL.

And, I guess the thing is that I do still have it all -- a beautiful healthy happy child, a warm, safe and cozy home, a supportive family and community, wonderful neighbors, my own health, my own perseverance and will and strength to continue this journey…
Jeffrey says I’m doing all this with a lot of grace.  I hear that a lot actually.  I don’t really feel graceful, I told him, in fact I feel like I'm fumbling through this; but there must be that quality in the way I interact with the world, somewhere down the line I learned to live gracefully.  It’s coming in handy these days.


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March 6, 2015
Wow.  This journey is f***ing crazy.  I just read what I wrote last, and … the guilt!  I have so much guilt about not loving George well enough, but I DID love him well, I loved him very well, and I cherished him completely and did everything I could to make him feel loved and secure and wanted.  I always told him he was the one for me, that I loved him to pieces and was so happy to have found him.  I told him how lucky I felt, how lucky Nova was to have him for a father.  I don’t know what I really wish I’d done better, other than… well… I didn’t always feel amazing because I didn’t always feel complete.  I still don’t feel complete.  But that has nothing to do with George and everything to do with me.  My lack of security does not mean I loved him any less than 200%.  Because I did, George.  I do.  I love you 200% to infinity.  I know you knew this and still know this.

I came upon this photo last night at Toast & Michelle’s wedding, and it just killed me.  He looks so solid and happy and peaceful.  So REAL, like I could reach out and touch him.  And just like that, I’m thrown back into a state of WTF?!?!?  Spinning again, not comprehending this loss, holding George’s ashes and not knowing how or why he’s gone.  He was just here.  And now he is in a box on my lap.

Suddenly my life makes no sense.  My past seems illusory.  Or too real for the present to also be real.  How can my past and present both be true?  How can this life change so explosively and leave me holding a box of ash?  Just like that, the calm quiet period I’d had, vanished.

I am back to -- um, no, I don’t get it.  Where is George?  He was real, right?  I really knew him, I really loved him, what we had was so real and SO GOOD, how could it be over?  Life just came and took him away from me, just stole him from my morning sleep.  I kissed him goodbye one morning and then he was gone forever.  Yes, I believe I have a right to be angry.  Angry at life.  Angry at death.  Angry because it f***ing hurts and there is no one to blame.  There is no one to hold me through this, not really.  I am the strong one.  I am the mama.  I am creating every way possible for me to move on with my life but I am leading this charge and there is no one beside me, shoulder to shoulder.  I am carrying my daughter.  I am carrying my husband’s ashes.  I have support but they all look to me to tell them what to do.  I do not know what to tell you!  I need help but the truth is, you can’t help me in the way that I need it, because you are in charge of a different life, your own.  What I need is someone to share in the responsibility of my life with my daughter, and there is no one who can do that.  Everyone has their own life to live.  So, I lead this life, and Nova’s life, by myself.  And I grieve for George.  And my heart screams for him.  My heart is SO BROKEN, it is so so broken.  
And I feel crazy because he is dead but I feel he is real.

Somehow I am supposed to continue to feel his love without his words or touch or physical presence.  I am supposed to just know by feeling, sensing, believing that he is all around me and that he loves me.  This is faith, I suppose.  Is this George religion?  Ugh.  Haha.  Honestly.  I do not know how to survive this.  I am tired.

Nova being out of the house brings me back to the time before she was born.  The house suddenly feels like it used to, without her presence here.  Like George is out and I am home alone… except he is not out, he is dead.  Holy f***.

It’s amazing, really, how I keep my shit together for Nova.  I’ve lost it several times in the last hour and it’s only because she is not here.  I don’t know how much emotion I’ve contained inside because I don’t have the space to let it out.  I find it so hard to cry in front of her and to sob hard, to make those fixed painful faces that your face just makes when you cry really hard -- I don’t want to scare her!  She is so happy and smiley and innocent.  Why introduce such misery and sadness?
But oh, I really need more space -- more than zero -- to cry and release and let it all flow out.  There is so much.  It’s like a war zone in there.