A Moment's Grace

"I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I'll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah."

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Here, I yell into the void. When I need a space for my words to go but don’t necessarily need ears to catch them, I write here. Because it feels a little bit public. But it’s not anywhere my family or friends might see, so I won’t actually have to explain myself.

And that makes me feel just a little bit pathetic.

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I am drowning.

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I would like to pause today and not function. I don’t want anyone else to need me today. I want to meet the bare minimum of needs for myself. That is all.

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I don’t know

I don’t really know what I want to say, but I know I feel like writing.  I know that I want to use words to soothe this hurt inside, even though I know it won’t actually help.

My dad died on July 26th, 2020.  Last year I experienced all of the firsts without him.  My first birthday without dad, the first Thanksgiving without dad, the first Christmas.  And I expected all of those firsts to be hard.  I knew they would ache and hurt and open a wound that’s still bleeding.

What I didn’t expect what that this year - the year of seconds - would hurt worse than the firsts.  But I get it.

Because last year I had pass on grieving.  The death was recent and the firsts are hard, so it was acceptable that I struggled to make it through that first year.  But now, the world has moved on.  Time keeps passing and lives keep going, and yet I’m still just as wounded and broken as I was on July 26th.  Except it feels like the world has forgotten my pain; there is no longer a pass for me to need to grieve.

I’m feeling sorry for myself.  I know I am.  I’m struggling to know how to deal with life - people, job, school, marriage - and I’m using my grief as a crutch.  Because I’m still hurt, and scared, and broken.  Because I don’t recognize the shape of this world without my dad in it, and everything feels wrong.

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This is Lucy Lane.  She’s a Labrador - Pitt Bull mix and the love of my life.  She rescued us in July and I cannot get enough of this fluff nugget.

That is all.

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Hope is the thing with feathers...

or so says Emily Dickinson.  And I think the lady was on to something.

Today, my husband and I did a procedure - Intrauterine Insemination - to possibly get pregnant.  Essentially, they hop you (ladies) up on hormones to make sure you’re making eggs and ovulating.  Then, my wonderful husband makes a deposit (and offers some encouraging words to his boys).  A medical technician threads a catheter up through my cervix and into my uterus with the hopes that the boys and my eggs make sweet, sweet love and a baby results.

I am filled with an amount of hope I haven’t known in a long time.  And it’s edged with caution, of course, because I know that this might not take this time.  We might have to try again.

But for the first time since in the three years since we’ve started trying for a baby, I have hope.  I have something magical that could be happening inside my body - a miracle and a blessing - and I am feeling hopeful.

The last year of my life has been filled with grief and loss and heartbreak.  I have been struggling to keep my head above water as my world changes into a shape I do not recognize.  My job has been stressful and unfulfilling in a way it’s never been before.

Having a moment of light in all of this darkness is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

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I am exhausted in a bone-deep-shattered-soul-heavy-hearted kind of way. The kind of exhausted that is not remedied by a few good nights of sleep. The kind of exhausted that haunts you.

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I am not ok

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On November 1st, I experienced my first birthday without my Dad.  And this Thursday, I’ll experience my first family holiday without my Dad.

Physically, he had been far away for awhile.  He moved to Arizona and I live in New Hampshire.  Space has kept us apart, but he was always a phone call away.  We would share things on Messenger.  He would text a weather update (because he hated snow and cold and loved reminding us how warm it was in AZ).  I felt his presence in my life every day, even though we weren’t physically close together.  I have celebrated birthdays and holidays without Dad at the table.  But he was alive.  He was there.

His death has put a hole in my heart and my spirit and my life in ways that I cannot put into words.  I piece of me is missing.  It’s hard to define the shape, to explain the feeling, to verbalize the ache.  But it’s there - so raw and so real - every day.

And each milestone that passes feels like another tear in the fabric of my being.  And I know that I’ll stitch myself back together, perhaps stronger than before.  Time heals all wounds - so they tell us.  And these cuts will heal over into scars.

But I am not OK.  

I am not OK.

I am broken and hurt and sad and lonely and lost and scared....

I am not OK.

Daddy...I miss you.  I didn’t get enough time.  You left too soon and I am so mad at you for leaving - again and again and again - and mad at myself for not trying harder to get to you.

Reader, love fiercely.  Don’t wait until tomorrow.  Burn brightly for those closest to you - hug them harder, say your love louder, speak your truth now.  Not later.  Now.

I cannot tell you what emotions you’ll feel or what regret will taste like in your mouth.  I can only tell you what my experience has given and taken from me.

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All the feels.

I haven’t been writing for myself much - not in a long time.  There have been a few sparse posts here, but I often forget that this blog even exists.  And I have no followers, so anything I post is simply to put words down.  Sometimes I wish there were people to interact with, but most of the time I’m OK with just having a digital journal.

Grief is a strange journey.  There are all of the steps listed out there - the stages of grief - like there’s a map that can be followed, like someone might find there way out of it.

But I think that’s a load of shit.  Sure, there are stages.  But who the hell knows if you’re going to experience them?  Or in what order?  Or for how long?  Whoever tried to contain grief in a set of stages was just trying to make sense of their own undefinable emotions.  I get that.  I get trying to make sense of everything that I’m feeling, or not feeling, or feeling too much.  That’s really what this blog has become - trying to get down what’s happening in my head and make sense of my grief.

But nothing works.  Like the tides in the ocean, grief comes and goes as it will.  There’s nothing that could possibly control those tides except the gravity of a celestial being.  I can name grief and it’s friends.  Anger.  Disbelief.  Sadness. Loneliness.  Regret.  Sorrow.  

I can name them, but I can’t control them.  I can’t predict them.  I can’t make them leave, or make them stay, or make them explain to me when I’ll feel better.

And Time.  Oh, Time.  So consistent and yet completely unpredictable.  Sure, the hour hand will pass by twelve o’clock twice a day.  Minutes will last 60 seconds, and hours will last 60 minutes.  Time will tick on and on and on.  

But no one explains how those seconds can feel like days, or how those months can feel like minutes.  No one can track what time memories will strike and knock the breath from your lungs.  There is no calendar for the days that Sadness will visit and throw a tea party with Loneliness and Regret in your rib cage.  Or the hour when you’ll laugh and smile and forget that grief has even existed in your world.  And I’ve heard it been said that “time heals all wounds” and perhaps that’s true.  But time can’t erase scars.  And while scars can fade, they’re with us forever.  And then grief is sitting next to us on our commute to work, or while we’re doing the dishes, or when the alarm goes off in the morning.  Grief points to our scars and says, “Remember when?”  And then it invites friends over again, for a sappy movie marathon.  Sorrow brings tissues, because these kinds of movies just make them cry.  Sadness brings the chocolate.  And Loneliness shows up late but stays long past the others.  Anger changes the channel to some forensic reality tv show while Disbelief tells the same story for the 100th time.  Regret asks if it can sleep on your couch - they’re just too drunk to drive this time.

Do these feelings every go away?  I’ve heard they “fade with time” but I don’t actually know.  Do I want to know?  Do I want these feelings to fade and disappear?  Because if they do - if they’re gone - does that mean the death of my dad hurts less?  If they’re gone, does that mean I’m OK?  And if I’m OK, am I somehow forgetting Dad?  Should I be happy without him in my life?  Should there always be a hole that no one else could ever fill?

...and this is the Confusion portion of our program.

This is exhausting.  

But, if you’re wondering, writing this helped lift some of the weight.  A little bit.  And for tonight, a little bit is enough.

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Stop the world...

I want to get off.

I am so overwhelmed.  Really.  Truly.  I’m falling to pieces and I don’t know what to do. 

My step-dad died in June.  He had been part of my life since I was a little girl, and married to my mom since I was 18.  In his own, quiet way, he took care of me.  He loved me.  He made sure I knew that I mattered.  And I miss him so much.

In July, we had to put my dog down.  She was suffering from cancer, and old age, and I know it was the right thing.  But her absence has left an incredible hole in my heart and in my life.  I miss her so much.  And this is the first time in my life that I have not had a dog.  Coming home just feels so empty.

My dad died in July.  Suddenly.  Unexpectedly.  I have no words.  I have no idea how to move through life without my daddy in it.  I wake up every morning and it hits me with unimaginable force that he’s gone.  And I miss him.  So much.  

I am broken.  I am lost.  I am hurting.  I am hurting.  I am hurting.

And life moves on.  I’m expected to show up at my job every day and teach 75 8th graders who really don’t give a shit about English or reading or writing.  I have to email parents, plan lessons, update grades, sing and dance for the audience who just wants to play games on their phones and whine about masks.  I have to ask them to clean their desks after each use, keep them from touching each other, and make them wait to leave the room until the next room is empty.  I have to set up time slots for parent conferences, but they’ll be remote this year, and it’s one more thing on my plate that I don’t know how I’m going to manage.  I’m teaching an extra class this year - we all are - so I have no time in my day for planning or prepping or grading or meeting with my team or working with my peers.  That means I’m working 10 hour days, at least, and it’s exhausting.

I’m taking a graduate course.  Right now, I don’t know why.  I’m working toward my second masters’ degree and I don’t know why.  For bragging rights? For extra money?  For something to do?  I really don’t know.  It’s one more thing on my plate that I don’t know if I can handle.

This year has been about balance.  I exercise every day.  I watch what I eat (as best I can).  I’m putting myself first, when possible.  I meet with a therapist once a week to work through my craziness and anxiety and now my grief.

And yet, I feel like I’m barely holding on to anything.  I’m not doing my best work anywhere.  I’m managing.  I’m hanging on by my fingernails and everything is about to break.

I’m having a pity-party tonight.  But I’m not sure how to get myself out of this headspace.

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Every time I make the bed and fold the corners just so, like you taught me, I think of you.

Every time I utter the words, “it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” like you always used to say, I think of you.

Every time I look in the mirror and see your blue eyes looking back, I think of you.

Each night, when I close my eyes and think about praying, I imagine you’re the one catching my words.

Each morning, when I wake up, I remember all over again that you’re gone. Not away. Not missing. But permanently, forever, no-more-chances kind of gone. And my heart breaks again.

Daddy...I miss you so fiercely it physically hurts. I think about our last phone call, when I told you that Bob had died - the man who took your place as mom’s husband and the man who stepped up to be my step-dad - and I hurt even more. Because the last time I talked to you I was mourning someone else. I was mourning another father figure whom I loved a lot.

And I feel guilty and horrible. Because Bob was someone I loved so very much. And I had no idea that six weeks later you would be gone, too. I had no idea that I would never get to see you again.

I don’t know what to do, Dad. I don’t know how to live in a world where you don’t exist. I move through each day, and the world keeps turning, but I feel so lost and alone and scared. How can life keep going without you? Who’s going to call me “my baby!” and give me bear hugs, or tell me the weather out west? Who’s going to teach my children how to make cocoa, or tell them stories of your own childhood? Who’s going to remind me that being a Richardson means being strong and never giving up? Or that home isn’t a physical location, but where the people you love the most are?

You taught me well, Daddy. I know I’ll keep growing and I’ll do just fine. But there will forever be a hole in the space you should be. There will forever be something missing from who I am, because some of the best parts of me came from you.

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I don’t quite understand how so many emotions can be in one person at the same time. How do I make room to feel all of this? What thing do I feel first? Which one is real? Are they all real?

I feel like I am falling apart and coming back together in a shape I don’t recognize.

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I am drowning in doubt.

I don’t know what to do, but I can’t keep doing this for much longer.

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I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this. And I am so very scared.

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Oh, bother.

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Saturday, we were told that students would not be coming back into schools and that we would be transition to remote learning.

Monday, I went into the school building with my colleagues and we tried to wrap our heads around this whole experience. We came up with too many questions and not enough answers.

Today, I went back into the building. A few less people than yesterday. A few more answers, but still so many questions.

I am a person who thrives on routine. I like my order and structure. My anxiety quiets when I have a plan, a set schedule for my day. It’s part of why teaching and I make sense together. But this...remote learning, no students in the buildings, no classes, no face time...

I have no idea what I’m doing. No one else does, either, and we’re all just trying to be flexible and patient and forgiving. But I don’t know how to not get anxious. It’s my default setting. I am working so very hard to cope, as I know the rest of the world is, too. But the unknown is certainly scary.

I hope we come out on the other side of this experience knowing the good in human-kind. That we see the silver linings in such a strange and new time for our world. That we learn and grow as communities and a nation.

I have hope. And that is making all the difference.