I’ve tried to be pretty transparent about my grief. It’s felt like the only way I could keep living – I can’t just pretend to be okay when I am so, so far from being okay. But even with my efforts at being open and honest, there’s only so much that I can convey in casual or day to day conversation.
What doesn’t show is how it’s not just that I am grieving my wife any my son, but that this whole experience of soul-shaking loss has impacted every single area of my life. Grief has impacted my ability to focus/concentrate, I feel scattered, and I’m still so sad every day. I worry about how others view me – that my grief is making me less competent professionally, or that people think I am grieving too much or too long. My sleep is unpredictable – some days it is okay, but other days I don’t get anywhere near enough, and we all know how multiple days of not enough sleep can impact our cognitive functioning.
I have no place to go where I can get respite from my grief. My wife and son are gone. Although the reminders of that are certainly stronger at home, it doesn’t really matter where I am or what I’m doing – I still grieve them. All day there are reminders – whether it is someone else at work who gave birth right around the time I was due with George, or moments during the day when I would have messaged Sara, or sights/sounds/events that stir up memories of our pregnancy or my 4 years with Sara.
I even find myself feeling adrift in respect to spirituality and faith. I’m so angry that Sara and George were taken from me and I don’t know how to believe in the divine when my whole world has been taken from me.
Grief of this type is not simple. It is not something I will ever truly “get over”. I don’t wan’t to “move-on” in the sense of leaving Sara and George behind. I need to move forward with my grief, which will always be there to some extent, bringing Sara and George with me in a way that they can still be part of my life.
When I think about moving forward, I worry – I worry that I will forget all those small memories that made my time with Sara so special. I worry that I won’t be able to move forward, that I’ll get stuck. I worry that I’ll be judged for how I choose to try and move forward. Not only do I have to deal with the fact that my life was completely upended, but there is such a huge hole that I have to actively work at healing and rebuilding. This isn’t something that’s just going to happen, no matter how much time I give it.
Note: this was written based on a writing prompt provided to me through a paid course I am taking. I am not including the prompt, because the daily prompts are a critical component of that course.