Changes

This past week I spent four days in Wales at the home of some lovely friends. I was fed and watered and dosed with a smidge of teasing, and it was sad to leave and fly home. The letdown was coming home to a cold, empty home.

It is often said that grief and loss alter the address book of those who have lost. What happens when we have someone exit our lives, or when death comes into our life, can be challenging or devasting for those left behind. Due to two different events in my life, my husband’s death and a faith transition, I lost ninety percent of my address book. The rebuild is being done in new ways, and with new understanding.

The above being said, that isn’t what I’m going to talk about. I’d like to talk about the changes that come because of the work we do in our process of rebuilding our lives after a deeply life-changing event or a death. The fact is that all of this can shake us to the core. I haven’t really heard this spoken about, as everyone talks about coping.

We might be sobered, or become more of a risk-taker. We could do a complete about-face and change our career path. We might change from not questioning our faith to abandoning what we once believed. Grief does a number on the body and soul. It is something that must be experienced to fully understand its jarring reality.

Grief sends the bereaved to the emergency room thinking they’re having a heart attack. It sends others into a hermit-like state of existence, and the unique possibilities are too numerous to mention, so I’ll stick to two of the most common ones.

So, as a friend, please do the good stuff of listening to the hard things a friend needs to speak. You might feel squeamish, but as you open your heart and mind to their reality, it gets easier. There are added do’s for suicide and trauma. Like death, everyone has a different version of trauma. Don’t compare.

I’ve often had to stop and reflect about how Jon’s suicide altered me personally. What I once valued changed. I had to question some major assumptions about myself and those around me. I found that certainty had been wiped out from my life. I discovered that my family didn’t know what to say after the suicide. I’ve now established a boundary around the subject because no one really wanted to ask and talk about the suicide right after it happened, or in the first year. Going on eight years later, it would be much too little, and way too late.

So how have I changed? In some ways, I’ve become more selfish, and in other ways much more generous. The pandemic and the lockdown caused me to question my safety. I was now alone, and it was not an easy world to adjust to. Most of all, certainty has been taken out of my life. For the most part, the loss of certainty is a good thing. Certainty can make one arrogant.

As I did the work, there were wow moments of realizing that things had been altered. There were also gentle velvet times that softened the harsh reality of my new life. Somewhere in all of this mess, I awoke to a new sense of self. Eights are strong souls, and we can tell it like it is. I was stunned when I began to realize how all of this had altered me. I saw myself not as the gentle soul I thought myself to be but a harsher person who I didn’t like. When we’re forced to see our new reality, it can get ugly fast. I’m needing to adjust to the me I really am. It isn’t that I’ve never been this way: I have. It is that I’ve never needed to soften the hard edges in the way I realize I need to do now. I’ve cried, I’ve become depressed for a few days, and then risen up to fight for a better me. I was blind to who I was, and grief called me out to new growth. It is a process that takes years. No one should be the same person at the end of any year. I’m not the same person I was in 2016. I’ve lived eight more years.

My beliefs have changed; my attitudes have changed, and I understand things I didn’t, and couldn’t, understand before. I also know that this process can breed trauma. I accept the trauma not as drama. I accept how I’ve been affected by all of this with an understanding that there are resources out there. I look back and I wonder how I could have ever thought there wouldn’t be some trauma with this loss. Time and wisdom have sobered me to a new reality. While change is good, it can be harsh.