I climb up on my bed on all fours and rock forward until my head is buried in my pillow. I wrap my arms up under it until I can grab the back of my head and try to hold in all the wailing, all the sobbing… contain it in the cocoon I’ve built for my very loud and angry grief. I rock back and forth and scream and cry for what feels like days and weeks.
Sometimes the grief is heavy. I lay on my stomach on the couch, head turned out to one side, not seeing the room I’m in. Water, like leaky faucets, streaming from my eyes and soaking the throw pillow I have landed upon. Hours of a heavy, weighted fog just sits on top of me. Keeping me comatose and a non participant in life. More often than not, this is how you will find me.
Sometimes the grief comes out of what appears to be nowhere, but after much over thinking, I know it was destined to show up that way. Like listening to the radio. Sheesh, why would I ever do that? It’s a veritable sob-inducer, music is. Or a pair of women in a store that can only be considered mother and daughter, enjoying the joy that mother and daughtering brings. Their happiness, their undeniable irritation. My undeniable jealousy, causing heartbreak to leak all over me.
More recently, my grief has been controlled. I purposefully blare the exact type of music that will stir up the pit of misery, or intentionally check out an audiobook from the library that is about death and dying and grief. I get my wailing and leaking done before work, and then do it all over again on the way home. My 50 minute each way commute becomes a form of therapy, a place to uncork the bottle and allow it all to flow. I find this results in less outbursts during the day. They’re still there, but not as frequent.
Grief has a wild and unpatterned way of sprinkling emotions throughout your day. It cannot be anticipated or contained as it demands to be felt. It will be expressing itself before I realize it is. Tears, already bubbled up and out of the ducts before I know I’m sad. Mom, all of a sudden sitting there, telling me something profound or inconsequential at any given moment, and I’m a gonner.
Grief is my new, undesired shadow that I imagine will follow me for the rest of my days.
– – – I just signed into my blog and looked at some old posts I’d started and never finished. This one was written eight months ago, in February 2018. The gut wrenching rocking and comatose couch time may have dwindled since then, what with the remodel and moving I’ve been distracting myself with, but the loud sneak attacks are just as harsh, if not more often. I’ve read more and more about grief. I’ve watched more movies. Collateral Beauty… omg, watch it!!!! This grief shadow is here to stay. Some days I simply call it “mom.”
Ramblings of a Dodo 