Reflections, Part 8
The New Frontier
As I write this, I’m still doing a countdown to the anniversary of the suicide.
When I decided to do this series of posts, I had not thought them out, and I allowed my fingers to weave the tale of the last decade. I have no regrets in doing this, as the things that got said were what needed to be conveyed.
It is said that grief rearranges the address book. I’ve found this to be true. After Jon’s suicide, some of his friends struggled with what had happened, and people I knew distanced themselves for whatever reason. Most people, instead of saying something, failed to say anything. This was true of family as well. While they did help with the burial cost, there were no flowers—nothing that would have been an outward sign of being thought of. The unexpected surprise was the friend who sent money to help. We’d never met—that would happen in 2019 when I made a trip to the central US. “B,” you will always be in my heart.
The events of those first few days melt together, and I’m thankful for the therapy that I have done. My iceberg—you know, the one I’ve crushed on—kept me safe and allowed me to get to where I am today. She is now resting away.
That Monday I sat at my dining table and asked myself how I, as a disabled woman, would be able to navigate what was ahead. I found out later from someone who is now on the periphery of my life that I had been expected to fold up, board a flight, and move back to the US. I’m an eight on the Enneagram, and eights don’t run from stuff—even if it takes us decades to come out. We must ultimately face it: all of it.
Over the past ten years, I believe I’ve done a really good job of dealing with stuff.
While doing the hard work of recovering from the loss of Jon, I realized that yes, I still miss him at times, and I don’t miss him. As I read through old posts, the things I learned in that real time resurface like old friends reminding me that they still are present in my life. I honor my grief wisdom. I reflect on the Serenity Prayer and the wisdom it offers to all of us. There are things we can change, and things that we need to let be. We can’t change our feelings: we can do the work of acceptance, and that in turn might alter some of the feelings.
I think back to the night of the suicide, and how my friends took me in that night. They offered hospitality in an unexpected manner, and it came with a prayer that turned out to be helpful—well, what I remember of it.
I look at more posts and come across the one about fluffy towels, and I remember the joy. I still feel joy using them. The freedom of not having to deal with the crazy part of things with Jon is a good thing. There are no longer feelings of guilt or compassion fatigue. It is true that the quality of the tears changes in the process, and the first two years of crying jags were awful. And then, the tears changed. I’m a believer in this process. If a person allows the process to unfold naturally, the body and mind will make space for a gentle change. One day you wake up, and you notice that things are different. It’s kind of mind-blowingly wonderful. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, just that it did, and it was sometime late in my second or early third year.
One huge happening in all of this is that I lost a village and discovered a new one. This village is filled with those that face life courageously and call me out when I need to be called out! They are friends who speak a new and better language than the one I once spoke so well.
I’ve often returned to the metaphor of crossing Styx. It wasn’t something that I read about in a book. Styx is that place we go in grief and loss to do some of the deepest work we must do to discover the new life.
The discovery I’m making on this new soul journey is that I will always revisit things I’ve learned in new ways. I used to joke with Jon about him having the “aha” moment after I’d said it ten times. The truth is that we often need to hear it many different ways until one of those ways sinks in and we sit up and take notice. The human mind is both amazing and goofy. If we can allow our minds to teach us, they will do just that. Once again, we’ll think we’re having a watershed moment when it is just our brains noticing things in a new way.
I started this blog years ago, and the title for the blog came about because of my husband’s psychiatrist. During a session he stopped Jon from talking and listened as I expressed some feelings that needed to be put out there. At the end of the session, I thanked him, and his response was: “You needed to be heard.” I knew I had the title for this blog.
The grieving need to be heard until they don’t need to be heard. We talk about our loss until we come to a point in time when the storms calm, the winds stop raging in our minds, and we can once again stand tall and breathe in the fresh air of life on the new shore and take our first secure steps forward.
