Thursday, February 6, 2014

Grieving wears on you.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/grieving-parents-risk-early-death-study/story?id=14467734

I remember looking at a Mother who lost her child and thinking that she had aged really rapidly. The onset delays a bit, but it seems like it hits full force a few months down the road. Wrinkles settle in around your eyes and grey invades your hair.

I wonder if my friends or coworkers think the same about me?

I guess it doesn't really matter, but I do think hard grieving triggers an aging process. I think it is one of the reason for the above.

Lately

I haven't been writing a lot. It's not to say that things are better, just that sometimes I plan out a blog in my mind and that is enough to work through whatever I am fighting with that day. Or sometimes I'm just so worn out that I run out of time.

But I keep coming back to the thought that things will never be the same. I will in some ways never be as happy as before- not because I'm depressed, but because so many of the things I delighted in were small things. The way I loved my bee hive and the pollen sacks on fuzzy legs. How I loved picking out new baby chicks, tiny mysteries to see what they turned into. I adored my dogs, the soft velvet spot where the ear joined their head. All that sort of pales now- because my family is so much more important to me now that these things do not seem to be as much. Which might be where it should be, but a lot of the joy is gone. The odd thing in finding out what I value most besides God, is that now it is not complete and my joy will never be full.

There are good days. Please do not mistake me in that. I love the way Paiden tries to brush his hair with the back of the hairbrush, mimicking. Or how Emily writes "I lub you." But somehow in the back of my brain I try to remember if Perry ever did the same thing with the hairbrush, or what milestone of his own he'd be reaching now.

There's a battle that your mind wages. You want to enjoy the little things, and yet at the same time your mind is wondering how you can forget what has happened enough to do it. You feel almost like a traitor to yourself. Isn't that what you are angry about sometimes, that people are capable of forgetting?