I have promised myself to continue to take you guys along on this grief journey as much as I can. So here goes. My first grief blog post on a blogger account I used maybe 30 years ago
I have obviously been keeping very, very busy. I’m enjoying playing more than ever, and I’m writing a lot of new material. These are good things. The bad side is that I feel my life is lacking some necessary patterns and routine, and I’m often feeling far apart from my kids. There’s quite a lot to wade through and no real destination to reach, and this is just part of it.
I have often wrestled with guilt over doing as well as I often am. The truth is I work very hard on myself and I lean into my grief as hard and as often as I need to, which is sometimes more and sometimes less than I expect. I put on songs that make me think of her, and I weep and talk to her. I tell her “I’m sorry” and “I miss you” and it feels like she’s holding my head in her hands when I do. I guess in some way it’s good to feel close to her.
Today I experienced something I had only heard about from other family members or other grieving spouses I’ve met in online groups. A few words from a show that was passively on my bedroom tv after my workout this morning, then an unexpected song in the car were both sort of rattling around on the back burner of my conscious thought. Then this feeling of being under a weighted blanket overtook me. It was frightening. I knew it was just grief, but it pares away the veneer of the ‘ok’ and left me kind of undressed and razor burned up against the loss of her. I was grateful for being on autopilot, as I was in the car, and getting to the house and trying to work through my feelings, and even more grateful that my day job suddenly needed me to come to the office on my remote day. That helps. But the grief is often like eating your favorite pepperoni pizza and having someone throw their dirty underwear on top of it. This was more like the pizza turned into a hole and I was falling in.
I certainly don’t say any this to worry you. I guess I say it so you don’t think I’m going to forget her. Maybe it’s to let you know that when you see me out and I’m the guy who’s laughing and joking, that really I’m a handful of different me’s all at once. Maybe writing about my sneaky grief helps me to be less judgmental of other people’s actions or emotions when i think they’re not “doing it right” or something. I don’t know. But you all have been so very supportive that I felt maybe reading this would be helpful for you, as writing it sure is for me.
Thank you for taking the time 💚🧡 I love you 😘
