It’s raining this morning, and it’s Monday. Ugh. But I’m at a friend’s house, a wonderful distraction from this relentless Seattle rain. We sit on the floor of her living room, by the fire, espresso in hands. Before long I’m recounting a recent storm in my life.
It’s a wonder I’m here in the first place. After all, today is Monday the sixth of March.
If our paths haven’t crossed in real life, even if they have, you might not know about March 6, and what happened over twenty years ago.
I try to avoid making plans on the sixth of March. I never really know how I’m going to deal with it all. Or not deal with it. All these memories, the longing, the aching, the missing that marks the anniversary of dad’s death. The worst part, I rarely mention it.
Some years are harder than others. Sometimes it’s just another day. We flew kites one year. We spent one anniversary at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Once or twice we remembered dad as we brunched at The Maltby Café in a small town east of us. Of course, this was before my ban on all things dairy and gluten.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could choose when grief is going to wreck havoc, even twenty-plus years into the journey? But grief doesn’t work like that. Not quite. The truth is, I never know how I’ll react until the day is upon me, until it’s here.
What’s strange about today is that I woke to the rain feeling, well, just fine. I actually went to bed last night without a sense of dread looming before me. I know, I know, I just finished telling you that March 6 isn’t always a day of heartache. But this year has been a doozie. I prepared myself for drama. I’m shocked that, today of all days, I’m not overcome with grief. You see, I’ve been breaking down and breaking through a lot these days.
It’s like someone flipped a switch. And just like that my time of mourning has come to an end. For now.
I know it’s coming back though. It’s impossible to escape grief for too long, especially when you loved someone like I did.
I am, and forever will be, marked by the life and death of my father. I wouldn’t change this for anything. I loved him so. To this day my dad is my favorite of all my favorite people, which says a lot because I’m surrounded by people who rank above-average in the loving kindness department.
Yet I can say with absolute certainty that this recent tidal wave of grief, or storm or whatever I just went through, it is finished, calmed. And once again it’s going to be okay.
More than okay. I’m at peace, joyful even. It appears that this little storm cloud of mine has gone and evaporated a year after it first came my way. Thank God. I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.
One year.
I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of the church calendar. There’s much this Presbyterian turned Nondenominational turned Assemblies of God-ish girl doesn’t know about the church calendar. I’m trying to wrap my brain around the anticipation, the hope, the despair, and the wonder of it all. Let me tell you, much is encapsulated in the ebb and flow of the church calendar. And life in general. I’m beginning to see there’s a time for everything, really there is. Everything has its season. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending how you see it, grief has its season, too.
It takes fancy footwork to allow one’s self to feel all the feels without falling into the depths of despair. But we kind of have to.
It isn’t very convenient to grieve in this culture of ours, anyway. Maybe we’d process grief better if we weren’t so busy and actually had the luxury to properly mourn as the lammentors of days of old, burlap tearing at our fingertips.
It’s getting better. Now there’s even a section at Target for us feelers.
Back to the sixth of March. My friend and I continued our conversation on the sage-green carpeted floor of her living room by the fireplace. I continue telling my tale, describing how he (and by he, I mean God) told me it was time to process what I went through by writing about it.
At this point in our conversation, I speak a bit about running. Not the good kind of running. No, the kind of running that has to do with avoidance. You see, it hurt too much to write. I had to protect myself against heartbreak. So I ran.
I speak also of God’s loving kindness, how he kept on, gently prompting me to write, over and over and over again until I finally did. And when I finally gave into the charge to write, I was able to breathe once again.
I tell my friend this and how it came about while I was too sick to do anything else, thanks to a nasty sinus infection.
The funny thing, if that’s what you want to call it, is that my friend shared a bit of her grief journey and how it resurfaced during a recent illness of her own. She spoke of her priest and how he came to visit, to pray for her during her time of convalescence.
At the end of his visit he turned to my friend and asked, “Did anything come up during your recovery?”
“The mind,” he went on to explain, “has a funny way of catching up with us during illness.”
As it turns out, we can’t run when we’re sick. All the thoughts, the feelings, everything we’re avoiding or haven’t dealt with, well, they have an interesting way of catching up with us once we’re forced to be still. Apparently, it’s perfectly natural to deal with trauma when we’re sick.
Ah, the kindness of an Anglican priest.
He doesn’t even know it but he’s helping me be brave when life is hard.
I don’t know my friend’s priest, but I could hug him. I want to thank this man of God for his wisdom, his divine insight, his encouragement and love. For extending grace and giving hope, for showing me (through my friend) that I’m not a crazy person after all.
I just needed to learn once again how to be still before God. That is all. To slow down long enough to acknowledge the passage of time, and to grieve all that happened many, many years ago by writing it out. And through writing, God was able to break through to me and begin the business of repairing my broken heart.
N.
P.S. I’ve been planning to read Kimberlee Conway Ireton’s Circle the Seasons, about the church calendar. And not just because I know the author in real life. Kimberlee is a kindred spirit and her book is waiting ever so patiently for me in the white bookcase in our freshly painted living room.
The only reason I haven’t picked it up yet is because I got sidetracked by Kimberlee’s second book, Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis, which I highly recommend. I even recommend it to those who’ve never experienced postpartum depression. Kimberlee’s book is what got the “ah-ha, you might have anxiety” ball rolling, before we even knew our son and I struggled with it. I am forever grateful for this book and my friend who was brave enough to write it.
