Small Griefs

July 15, 2009 by Rieshy

"And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness."

-C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

I thought this was an amazingly apt and succinct description of grief. What I didn't know until this past year is how you can be surprised by grief, horrible pun intended. My son didn't die last Summer but my illusion of his health died.

Deep down my husband and I knew something was not right with Jack since his birth, but we had not been forced to face it until the morning of his "crash". What followed was a series of little deaths as we learned more and more about his condition and how it would change our daily life, culminating 10 months later with the news that Samuel was also affected, though blessedly not to the same extent. It's been a long year.

My sister, Kay, was the one who clued me in on the grief issue. I kept thinking that I was just ungrateful and weak and sleep deprived. I was sleep deprived, but also too submerged in doctor's visits and test results to realize what was really wrong. Somehow knowing that I was mourning and what I was mourning made it easier.

Lately I've been restarting projects, picking up where I left off and branching out starting new things. Once again the days have too little time to do all I have in mind.