I refer to the time between Noah’s Wish Trip (Dec. 7-13, 2015) and his Last Day (February 19, 2016) as the Dark Days. The phrase Dark Days means so many things depending on how they are used together. For me, it’s the last of the last. The days when, if I had known, I would have recorded them in minute detail. I would have logged every second of every day if I had known they would be the last I would have with my OHT. During these Dark Days, the grief seems to weigh heavier around the emptiness.
It’s such a strange feeling, this grief. In this fifth cycle, these Dark Days feel different. The emptiness is still there, the weight is still there, but it feels cleaner, less cluttered. I feel more able to look at, examine and even embrace the weight in order to process and live with it. I’m able to remember the last days, especially that last week, without the Flight/Fight/Freeze and helpless rage response it usually triggers. I’ve been wondering why it’s different this time.
So, I started doing the hard work, with the help of two (yes two. You do what you have to) therapists, collaborating and getting to the heart of what is different. This is what we’ve discovered.
These last five years I have embarked on a new journey, one that is just for me. For so many years, I had to live in a world of protector. I had to protect myself and my boy from the Others. I was forced to be constantly vigilant, looking for the moments when I would be blindsided by an attempt to breach our world and upend it. I was forced to live in Fight/Flight/Freeze mode because the Others were ever and always striving to cause conflict, attack my ability to be a mother and advocate, and threaten to take him from me if I were to have the audacity to ask for help. So I stopped asking for help from anyone. I constantly slicked over the reality of the mode I was forced to live in and projected an aura of all is well, nothing to see here, I can take care of this all on my own.
I know now that my reaction to the Others was off the mark a bit. My trauma reaction lumped the Others in with the others; these two groups are vastly different. They are polar opposites. The Others lived to attack and cause shame; the others lived to help and support. And my work these last five years has begun to shine a light on the difference between them. I have begun to do what I need to do to fix the damage the Others did so I can bask in the blessings that the others freely give. But in order to do that work, I had to feel safe. After decades of not feeling safe, I had to change my circumstances.
So I did. (SOOOOO not that easy as those three words indicate, but maybe that should be the next post). I feel safe every day, in my new world with a new job and a new house and new hobbies. I feel safe, and comfortable. And the grief is just as empty, and just as weighty as it always has been. But the difference is that now I can begin to walk side by side with the heavy emptiness. The Dark Days don’t scare me anymore. They don’t fill me with helpless rage at the things that the Others did in that last week and the weeks before and after. Because I feel safe, I can put those things in the box labeled “not my work” and set them aside. I can take those Dark Days out, wander through the memories and find the bits of joy. I can find the deep connection that we had, especially in his last hours, and know that when he left this earth, he left surrounded by my love and the love of the others.
If I can give any useless advice to lend purpose to this post, it would be to check in with yourself. If your grief is causing you to be afraid, or to be filled with helpless anger, know that it is possible for it to change. The work to change grief can be excruciating and scary in itself, but when you get brave, get up and get on with it, you will make it through to a world where you feel safe to grieve. And you might even be able to begin to walk within the empty heaviness, guided by the moments of joy you can now find.
