Resilience

It’s about that time, again. I am heading into the storm, into the anniversary season. I have read the accounts of other widows who say that the second year wasn’t as hard as they had expected. I’m afraid of it, especially after last year. Last year I wanted to die. Who am I kidding? Last night I wanted to die.

My grief overpowered me last night. Every follicle on my body hurt. The pain was too great to put into words. I just knew I was feeling as bad as I was humanly capable of feeling last night. There was no relief, so I prayed.

I prayed to God and to Chris to help me stop crying. The skin under my eyes feels like paper from a weekend spent rubbing tears off of my face. Last night, that skin burned all by itself from the irritation. I didn’t know what to do other than pray.

I’m not a religious person, but I swear to God, I felt better the moment the prayer left my lips. I felt calmed, assuaged, cradled and I fell asleep wrapped tightly within my blankets still quivering from the meltdown.

I felt better when I woke up this morning.

It’s tough to lose trust in happiness and lightness. I never used to give much thought to a good mood. Now, although genuine cheer is not difficult to experience in the presence of others, I am all too aware of black clouds looming above me or hiding behind trees preparing to jump out and extinguish whatever happiness I feel once I am alone. Going home is tricky these days.

I find that if I do what I am supposed to do, I feel better. Tonight, I learned two songs for my upcoming show and I read my psychology book. I updated a web site that I own. Completing those three tasks has put my grief to sleep for the night. All too often I find myself drowning in too many commitments and responsibilities that would be so easy to manage if I could just force myself to follow through.

Grief feeds on disorganization. Keeping everything in order makes me feel wonderful. Now I don’t have to explain to the director of my show that I still don’t know my harmonies. I don’t have to sit in another psychology class wondering what the hell the professor is talking about. I don’t have to feel incapable just because I grieve. I don’t have to let grief rob me of my self-esteem, self-image and confidence in my natural ability to succeed.

I do still feel as though I am walking across a 2 by 4 piece of lumber above a pool of acid. I can balance pretty well if I concentrate on getting across. I want to get to the other side and I want to get there unscathed, but sometimes I just stand there exhausted, hoping I won’t fall and sometimes I do fall.

I feel mostly like a bird with broken wings who has been trying to fly away for the past two years. I take off and hit a tree or a wall and crash to the ground sometimes worse of than I would have been if I never tried to fly. But I keep trying anyway because I keep hoping that one day I’ll make it past the tree and the wall and end up soaring above the log cabin on the white mountain that Chris showed me the night he died.