#20 Unknown Territory

What does a shift in your grief, even a tiny, momentary one, mean to you? What does it say about loss? Or love?

A shift in my grief, even a tiny one, means that I am beginning to heal.

Do i want to heal? Yes.

Do I want to suffer? No.

Do I want to love Ben forever? Yes.

Do I want to forget Ben? No.

I taped a John Steinbeck quote inside the front cover of my Ben Journal #4:

"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."

I have thought about this statement many times. "Before Ben," I was happy. There was no Ben. I had an amazing and a full life. Now, "after Ben," I am miserable. The light has gone out and it IS so much darker. I have lost my beloved son and my mourning is during a lock down and massive social unrest.. Misery piled upon misery.

I can already feel a shift in my grief. At the beginning, I remember feeling I couldn't breathe and not being able to eat. I remember being wrapped in a thick blanket on the living room couch and not being able to move. I remember that I couldn't leave my home for days, and when I finally did, someone had to hold onto me as I shuffled along.

I remember counting the days, and now I count the weeks, since Ben's death. 11:50 on any Wednesday morning you couldn't get near me I was so radioactive with grief. Yet, this last Wednesday (Week 19), I made it to noon without diving into the depths of my despair. Now, it surprises me when I have an OK Wednesday. And, I seem to have graduated from my All-Black daze.

What does this say about loss and love? I don't know. My loss of Ben is still deeply with me. My love of Ben is still deeply within me. My grief is just below the surface at all times. But I think my shift in grief reflects the old adage that "time heals all," that life goes on. That we cannot help but take the next step forward, not away from the person we have loved but towards a new way of living without that person.

I don't know. I really don't know. This is still unfamiliar and unknown territory for me.

This is the first photo I took after I learned of Ben's death. My best friend insisted that we go for a morning walk at the beach. When I saw this copse of naked winter trees, I could only see the loneliness and pain of Ben's suicide, and the loneliness and pain of my grief.