Grief - I am coming to learn - is a sneaky sod of a thing that appears out of no where and can smack you for six and leave almost as quickly as it arrived, or hang about like a weight around your neck for hours, or days ...
Until January 20, 2019 I did not know this.
Nor the depths it could plunge you in an incredibly short space of time.
I mean, I understood grief. I had lost grandparents. Aged grandparents who were incredibly special to me.
I had friends lose parents.
I had lost beloved pets.
But I had probably the most shallow experience of grief people could have.
A general, run-of-the-mill lifetime variety.
I was so ignorant.
As a wise griever told me recently when I was lamenting my ignorance: You should be glad you were ignorant for so long.
They are right. Of course.
People who had treaded this path before me tell me that its not a bad thing that there are not lots of us on it.
But at the same time I feel grief is a bit like childbirth and raising children.
We should talk about WAY more than people do because when you are in it, it might stop you feeling like you have bugger all idea of what you are doing. That you are failing at it. That you get side swiped by it. That you feel completely at a loss about it all.
I find it so weird that the biggest things we as humans experience are the least talked about.
But probably, like childbirth and raising children, it isn't until you are experiencing it and you think back to those people who told you what it might be like and think: oh, THIS is what they were talking about... NOW I get it...
My grief quandry at the minute I think still stems from spending so much time on my own and finally contemplating my reality.
It allowed me to sit down, open up that box of my own deep grief that I've probably reasonably successfully been casting aside behind living every day with 4 kids and making sure they are ok for the last 2 and a bit years ... a bit of 'I'll deal with that later, I don't have time now' kind of thing.
I took the sticky tape off that box. A box I had probably kept tightly shut deliberately because I knew that it would take time and effort to deal with.
But I did finally have the time to long to wind down to a place where I could open the box. However, my time alone ended and I don't think I shut the box properly.
Some things have escaped I'm not really liking.
I have never been angry about this situation - everyone said "just wait, it will come ... you can't miss the angry bit ..."
I'm not angry at Pete or being in this situation his death left us in.
But I anger quickly about things. And things that are probably ludicrous to get angry over.
I anger over things not working - including my own self and brain - or other people doing things that mean I can't do what I need to do.
I anger at other people who lament what I now consider irrelevant stuff.
I get angry about being so overwhelmed and not being able to process my own emotions about it all.
I get angry about not having any understanding of how hard this would be - about how less than equipped I feel to deal with what I have to.
It's still not the anger that is spoken about in the 'stages of grief''... I'm also yet to find the bargaining phase'' ... the whole 'take me instead' type thing and 'why him and not some murderer ..'
People find that weird. But I guess I rationalise it that I have live in my reality.
The reality is very, very simple in my brain: Death is the only thing you cannot change.
And so I feel like it would waste precious energy being angry, bargaining, questioning ... all of it. None of it matters in my brain because even if there was an answer to them - it doesn't change it. Nothing changes it.
It's why I get angry about getting angry.
I seriously sit there sometimes and think: Come on, brain: Get yourself around it.
I guess the reality is so big, its still hard to get my head around.
Which I also find perplexing.
I mean - it hasn't changed for over two years now - and yet this is where it all gets weird with grief ..
I have dealt with this for two years and three months now. Every single day for about 830 days and yet I STILL don't have a handle on it.
I'm quite sure that there is nothing else we do as humans for 830 days straight that would on day 831 toss up something we didn't expect or couldn't handle.
I've also not necessarily enjoyed the passing of that time - which now makes me feel like I'm not on the same wave length as other people.
About 830-odd days have passed but on some days, it feels like that time has stood still for us, but not everyone else.
I talk to people and their lives are moving on and around and forward.
We are too, to a point. But I feel like I am being left behind. Or sitting on the outside of everything.
I wonder if its because I spend so much time corralling my people and doing what I have to do for my own people and myself that I have forgotten about other people and their worlds and their lives.
And I feel like I have just zoned out the whole rest of the world.
People say that's ok - but still? Still two years later - is that still ok??
I feel like I had a better handle on it in Year 1 than I do in Year 3!
Good friends who I haven't seen for so many months, who I wave to when I pass them at school pick ups or drops off, but when I actually speak to them, I feel so out of touch with their world because they have been doing so much, and other than a holiday, all we have really done is survive.
I don't feel like I'm on the same wavelength of conversation. Of parenting. Of doing things outside of my own world. Of anything.
I sat in a conversation between friends the other day and I honestly felt like I had nothing to contribute.
I spoke to other people and when they asked what we had done I couldn't say anything other than just going through the daily grind.
And then sport came back.
And I madly scrambled around trying to get us all back on a hockey pitch and then Anzac Day - a day that has always been incredibly special to us with my grandfather being part of my children's lives for all of their lives until late in 2018 - and then someone vomited at 8.40am this morning when we were ready to walk out the door...
And all the juggling balls fell onto the floor and rolled away and out of my reach.
I had things to do for work.
I had started the day - albeit reasonably stiff from running around a hockey pitch - enthusiastic about the day and week ahead.
That I was going to stay on top of.
But grief does this.
It waits for a moment. And then suddenly what should be something you can handle it something you can't.
Suddenly what is one little thing - is double, treble, quadrupled down on by all of the things.
And for me - my brain like to add in a touch of all the things I have on my to-do list I have also no managed to acheive.
So this morning ... one vomit at 8.40am turning into an hour of ugly snotty crying lamenting all of the things - not the least of which was the thing I was missing most.
That sense of complete and utter aloneness I had come to bear.
That when I opened the box to my grief I found deep loneliness that company cannot fill. A wide gaping wound that hasn't healed - and cannot be healed.
And that does my head in also. That forever, I will have this wound. And no matter how I try and heal it - it cannot be healed. Because nothing can heal that wound.
Like nothing can change death. Nothing can heal the wound that death brought about.
So while being sucked into the quicksand of deep sadness and tears this morning I did wonder what it was that really set it off.
It was this.
This video of home. Courtesy of Facebook Memories. Of Pete sitting on the verandah in the morning light at home in the Riverina. Of him being in the space he loved so deeply. Of us bring able to look back on this but know he is not ever going to do it again. That we are never going to be able to have him do it again.
And then the spiral began - of what I’m trying to deal with ... what we have lost ... how much it has hurt ... if I'm doing it right ... how I missed this trigger ... why I am watching the video over and over again when I know what it contains ... and down the rabbit hole it spirals.
A week ago I said I was fine.
I am fine. I will be fine.
It’s just always so frustrating and confusing and devastating and heartbreaking and all of the words when I can't see this coming.
When I get myself righted and we are sailing along - that this two hour storm appears and wrecks everything and then moves on.
But the upside is, it does move on.
It moves on with people ringing.
It moves on with people holding out their hand to lift you up.
It moves on with people listening to all of the gibberish this inevitably brings up that blurt out loud.
It moves on because its school pick up time or there is a deadline to meet.
And the waters calm again.
It's a sneaky thing, this grief.
It builds up and blows out when you least is expect it.
Build ups can be long and slow with much time in between.
They can be short and sharp and consistent.
There is just no rule book to it.
I had just always thought that after 830 days of it, I'd be a better meteorologist.
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