Grief and Gain

I have done with this week and I am very grateful.  It is always hard this week.  I feel like I am swimming through a mist all the time and my thoughts and movements all seem laboured.  I can't believe this far down the track and I am still struggling to come to terms with the fact that Frank is really just not going to come back.  I sometimes think that I am perseverating on his death.  I think that it is hard to tell the difference sometimes.  My mother would (and regularly does) just tell me to get over things like this.  I don't believe that she is the expert.  Nor do I believe that I am perseverating.  If I were I think that more of my days would dwell on Frank's death and less on Levi's and my life. 

We had a lecture at work the other day about grief (cheery hey!) and I walked away wanting to slit my wrists.  Perhaps it is just that it is hard to hear about different types of grief and different theories of grief and different ways of grieving, without thinking that behind all of that is just a lot of pain and that started to press down on me, that idea of all that grief that everyone feels.  I was just so weighed down by all that emotion, through the ages.  All that sadness just has to have a reason, a meaning that gives it sanity.  I don't know, perhaps I need a little longer in this life or the next. 

When I look at myself now compared to the me that existed before real grief, I am very different.  I am both weaker and stronger in many ways.  I find myself weaker in many little ways.  My emotions are closer to the surface at times, but some would argue that is better.  I cry at odd times but I'm able to hold back if I have to.  Things hurt more than they used to.  Before real grief, I had learned to hold hurt at bay somewhat and only react to the bigger stuff.  That is not true anymore.  Maybe that is what grief is for.  Maybe it puts us in a position where you start to question yourself, question authority, question medicine and particularly question God.  Maybe it makes you take a good hard look at your morals and ideals.  It makes you take a good hard look at yourself and your interaction with the world.  Maybe that is what it's for.