A Grief Revisited...Defining Surrealism

I started this blog in an effort to share my experience with grief...hoping, praying, that someone, somewhere, would read my words...my story... and find some form of comfort and hope in them. This blog quickly and unexpectedly evolved into so much more than that and I can't imagine ever falling out of love with this thing called blogging.  But...I continually hear a knocking at my soul that I think is telling me to revisit and share my grief story from time to time so that is what I'm doing.  I don't know how often I will do it just yet but my plan is to share a little  more of my story each time because it is my belief that every battle we are forced to fight...every storm life casts upon us, is not only meant to strengthen and grow our own spirits, but those of others as well. So here I begin...

Before losing Darin I really had no clue what grief entailed. My heart always ached and went out to those who had experienced such a great loss.  I would say a quick pray for them, send them a card if I  kind of knew them, and always shake my head and think or sometimes even say aloud, "I can't even imagine."


And I couldn't.  No one can.  Until it happens...


It's like you're going along fine in the world, completely unaware of how fleeting life is, and then BAM!, out of nowhere this thundering beast you never saw coming hits you so hard it knocks the wind out of you and leaves you struggling for breath and grasping for something...anything...to hold onto. 


In an instant everything in and around you changes.  The air even seems different.      


I remember not being able to cry.  I so much wanted to cry, as if that would somehow heal me and take away the sick, empty hole that had suddenly taken up residence in the center of my being. The tears did eventually come of course.  They came so much and so often that I wondered why I ever wished for them in the first place.  


I just wanted to feel normal again but I knew that I never really would.  At least not the normal I had always known.  


There were many mornings I would awake fully believing it had all been some horrible, awful dream but when I sat up to tell Darin all about it, I was hit with that cold, ruthless monster of grief and sick, raw emotion yet again.  I can't recall now how long that went on but that was just one of the many hard truths I was learning about grief. 


There would be good (or at least okay) days...days when I would notice things that I had never picked up on before grief entered my world.  Like those redbirds that suddenly began appearing in the trees in the front yard, or that penny on the floor that  I'd swear wasn't there just a second ago, or the way the clouds, the trees, and the flowers seemed to be talking just to me. 


Surreal.  This was the definition of it. I finally understood what that word really meant for the first time because I was living it every day. 


Where had my real life gone?


Because this one I was being forced to live surely could not be mine...