Right after my mom died, a friend who had lost her mother relatively young in life told me it took her seven years before she felt her life had gotten back on track.
Seven years, I thought, as we sat in the 1369 Coffeehouse in Inman Square. That seems like a really long time.
On the other hand, at least seven years was shorter than forever. The dull ache of grief was so pervasive that I resigned myself to the idea that I would be buried under its blanket permanently. It was comforting to hear someone say there was a chance it could get better someday—that it might lift, or even start to lift, after seven years.
The more time passed, the more the the seven year marker grew in importance. It was a goal I pointed myself toward. A milestone I wanted to reach. I started thinking of it as a prison sentence. I would serve my time and at seven years the prison bars would open, a veil would lift, and I would be free.
Yesterday, February 9, 2014, I reached the seven year milestone.
And I noticed one thing that is very different. It may seem like a small thing to others. But it is a huge deal to me.
Welcome, fellow travelers on the grief journey
and a special welcome to anyone new to The Grieving Room.
We meet every Monday evening.
Whether your loss is recent, or many years ago;
whether you've lost a person, or a pet;
or even if the person you're "mourning" is still alive,
("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time),
you can come to this diary and say whatever you need to say.
We can't solve each other's problems,
but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
Unlike a private journal
here, you know: your words are read by people who
have been through their own hell.
There's no need to pretty it up or tone it down..
It just is.
Some of you know that I struggle with food addiction. One of the things I have been working on lately in this lifelong battle is learning to tell the difference between real hunger and other physical discomfort that I incorrectly label as hunger. It is the habit of a lifetime, and very deeply entrenched. Am I really hungry, or just sleepy? Am I hungry, or just bored? Am I hungry, or just angry about something? I never used to make these distinctions. I responded to all those feelings with eating.
I realized a few years ago that I had been doing the same thing with my grief. Every uncomfortable emotion of my life was getting labeled as grief. Loneliness? Grief. Depression? Grief. Stress? Grief. And even the emotions above got the same treatment: Exhaustion and boredom and anger all got confused with grief, or became triggers for grief. Every emotion, positive or negative, was a grief trigger. I processed all these feelings in TGR without having much awareness I was doing it.
When my mom was alive and blamed eldercare for my feelings of exhaustion and stress and loneliness and depression I was quick to remind her that I was lonely before I started taking care of her. I was exhausted all the time and stressed out from work before I started taking care of her. I did not want her to feel like the cause of those feelings, or to feel responsible for them.
But after she died the intensity of loss did smash all my feelings together. Maybe I was not mislabeling anything at all. Maybe all my emotions actually were hyphenated, because grief overlaid everything else that was happening to me. Exhaustion-grief, stress-grief, lonely-grief, sleepy-grief, even hungry-grief. Those weren't mere labels. My grief was all-encompassing and inseparable from all the other life experiences I was having, especially the ones that affected me strongly.
Which brings me again to February 9, 2014.
Yesterday, if I had had my way, I would have had a very low key day of reflection and prayer and thanksgiving and reminiscing. I would have taken the day off and spent the day alone with my thoughts.
But as fate would have it, I ended up having a very busy day on very little sleep. A workday that started at 6 in the morning and ended at 7:00 at night. A day when I did not plan my meals well, as a result did not get very much to eat or drink, and was feeling physically hungry and slightly dehydrated all day. A day that was very tightly scheduled with very little breathing room between worship services and appointments and travel. A day when the only minutes I had to myself were during two taxi rides.
And when I fell into bed at the end of that marathon day, with my yahrzeit candle down to a small reservoir of melted wax after burning 24 straight hours, I had a wonderful revelation. I was beyond exhausted. But it wasn't sleepy-grief. I was very hungry. But it wasn't hungry-grief. I was under a great deal of schedule pressure. But it was not stress-grief.
I don't know whether this is the magic of the seven year marker, or what. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that I expected something big to change yesterday, and something did. Or maybe it was going on for a while but I only noticed it yesterday because I was paying such close attention. Either way, I am not going to look this gift horse in the mouth. It feels like a leap forward. Slow and somewhat arcane, maybe, but still a very significant sign of healing progress.
I am still grieving. Just last Tuesday I was crying out for MOMMY in capital letters in a message to my closest friend.
But the grief label is no longer automatically appended to every uncomfortable emotion I feel.
Strong feelings can stand on their own without being grief triggers or grief by-products. I can be hungry or exhausted or angry or frustrated or any of a number of other things without grief being mixed up in it. The floodwaters of grief are receding enough that the emotional ground beneath it can stand alone.
It's a welcome change. Long overdue. Or maybe right on time, after all the energy I directed towards hoping for some kind of big breakthrough at the seven year mark.
Maybe I am overprocessing this. But hey, that's what I do. That's how I try to understand myself and understand the world, and I'm hoping that processing my own grief will help me help others as they process theirs.
So I'm going to call this a victory.
And in the grief process, there are no small victories.