Most of my life, I’ve lived by a conscious decision to be unaffected by weather. I never saw much point in allowing my mood to be altered by something so completely out of my control. And I’ve been lucky enough to adhere to this idea, day in, day out. Until this week.
Tuesday was the first day of the second session of the grief support group I fought to get started at our local cancer center. Not having a group there was such an egregious oversight to me. I needed help which wasn’t there. I’m determined to keep it going so no one else has to feel that no place exists to share the grief that accompanies death, especially with others experiencing the same feelings.
But this group was very different from the first one. Everyone in the first one was a widow. I felt a kinship with those people and our exchange was open and freewheeling despite the best efforts of the social worker to have us follow a syllabus of a sort – the ones that lay out the stages of grief in order, as if we all will follow the same path like good little grievers.
This time, everyone in the group had lost a child. One was a 24 year old son who’d died of a rare kidney cancer. He’s been gone 2 years, but his mom is stuck in grief as fresh as the day he died in her arms. Then there was the couple whose son was working hard on his organic farm when a tree suddenly toppled over and crushed him to death.
I instantly felt like an imposter. After we became parents Michael and I had countless conversations about the fear of losing a child. And that was a constant, that neither one of us thought anything could fell us except that. And here I was with these people who looked ghostly and nakedly bereft. The new facilitator had her grief sheet with her and turned to the father of the son who died in the freak accident and asked him how he would describe loss. The man stared at her and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She could have been speaking in tongues for all he knew or cared.
I tried hard that day. I summoned all my internal resources to try to provide something meaningful to these people. I moved chairs to sit next to one woman and asked if I could just touch her hand as she vented. I felt so weighed down by their pain. I can’t deny my own, but still. I felt selfish and small even though I understand that I’m entitled to my pain.
When I left the group that day, I noticed the grey sky. It’s been grey and wet, icy and snowy, frigidly cold. So many people are sick with colds and flu and I, with my still dreadful sleeping habits, am digging deep and hoping my immune system will help me fend all that off, while I babysit for my sniffling, feverish grandchildren and watch my kids plow through their fatigue and aches. And then I realized I hated the grey weather. It feels like an iron yoke on my back and I want to push it away and feel sun and put my toes in the ocean where life will churn around my ankles. So strange to feel that sensation.
I have no idea how to adjust to this new feeling. Oddly, it makes me miss Michael more. He was the one who constantly moaned about winter and grey and cold, lying under piles of comforters and afghans on his side of the bed, while I never needed anything extra for warmth. While I couldn’t care less about what was going on outside aside from practical issues. I was always very busy and occupied inside. And despite this new external load, this awareness of the oppressive weather and atmosphere, I am internally occupied. I am quietly tracing the curve of his chin, the length of his fingers, the breadth of his shoulders inside myself, in this grey cloak. I’m doing my grief in the nether regions now, amidst the grey, foggy places that never meant much to me before. My new angle on the world.
