Time heals all wounds, they say. Good ol’ time….

I’m beginning the third year of my life. My new life. My new norm, as they call it. Oh, how I hate those words. When Ben died, the question “How can I live without one of my kids?” was on repeat in my head for weeks, even months. Even now. How do you do that? I simply don’t know….I just muddle through the days, still.

Every day is a new day of navigating through whatever pile of thoughts or emotions may be strewn before me, some old and some new. So often a thought will regurgitate in my head for days until I am able to process it. Writing down my emotions as they relate to a particular thought is really the only way I am able to work through the chaos in my head. Until I put the words on paper, I cannot rid myself of the chaos. It’s as though “The Thought” has an obsessive, possessive power over me until I do so. One of the latest thoughts that I can’t put down is “ancient grief.” I don’t even know how those two words got put together in my head, but they did, and they’re here.

There are two thoughts that are in my head every day: 1) LIVE IN THE MOMENT – Find joy in your life to balance your sorrow so that you are not sucked down through that hole into the muck that you can’t find your way out of; and 2) LIVE IN THE MOMENT – stay here, in today, because the tomorrows of life terrify you…they terrify you so much that you can’t allow yourself to go there because going “there” may cause you to break up into even smaller pieces than you are in today…you need to live in the moment to survive. That being said, I don’t know why I keep regurgitating the words “ancient grief.” So, it’s dissection time, time to put those words to bed in my head.

If I were to stand back and look at myself, I wouldn’t see what you see. I see myself as the epitome of grief. I may not show it, but I am still fully enveloped, cocooned, in my grief, in my sorrow, in missing my son. Ben is nowhere, but he is everywhere in my life. He’s in the places I go, the words I hear and say, every relationship I have. He is the vacant look in my eyes, that barren place inside of me that will always be. I have lived and breathed the loss of my son for only two long–excruciatingly long– years. It feels as though my grief has been a part of me forever. What will this grief, that already feels ancient, be like in 10, 20, 30 years from now after I have carried it for way too many more years by living day after day in this world without my son? Will I still be saturated in grief? Will it still be me? Will this wound heal, as they say, at least a little, as time moves on? I fear, really fear, the “me” that I will be as the years go by and this grief becomes even more ancient, even more ingrained in me.

This grief, this all consuming sorrow that I carry as I learn to move forward, is not unique to me. Shame on anyone who believes I think it’s all about me. My awareness of the pain and sorrow in those around me has grown exponentially since Ben’s death. I saw it in my husband’s shoulders, the grief that weighs him down, as I followed behind him as we walked the streets of Boston for a few days last month. I FEEL it the most in him when I see him from the back, when he doesn’t have to put on the strong man’s face for me or anyone else. I see it in his sagging shoulders. I feel his aloneness and his vulnerability in his tired steps. I do, I really feel it when I look at him from behind and also when I watch him while he’s sleeping. I FEEL the relief he feels when he has been able to escape his sorrow through sleep. It’s there. It’s palpable in my husband, in Ben’s brother and sister, in Ben’s two sons and Ben’s fiancee. Ben is nowhere, but he is everywhere. It is relatively new to our family, but this is ancient grief.

In two weeks my husband and I will be leaving on vacation, a week’s respite from caring for his elderly father while his sister comes to care for their dad. We need to get away. We are going to the ocean. My soul will be receiving solace, that solace which I am still desperately searching for, when I am on the beach. I will feel the timelessness of my grief. My sorrow will feel inconsequential as I watch wave after wave roll in. Just as time marches on, the waves will continue to break on the shore, repeating the rhythm of the hearts that have been broken every day–somehow and somewhere–since the beginning of time. I will feel the ancient grief in those waves, the grief that has permeated this earth since man began. Do you think perhaps the oceans have been filled solely with the tears from all of the mothers and fathers whose children have died before them? I will let my tears fall on that beach, as I stand alone in this world, and allow my tears to mix with the tears of those who have lived this pain since ancient times. May my tears become one with the tears that have seeped from the hearts of the other mothers and fathers who have stood on the shores of this world and cried for their children who have gone before them. I will feel less alone. I will feel their ancient grief in the waves, just as I feel this ancient grief in my heart.

I am the epitome of ancient grief….trying to survive in a world filled with ancient grief.