Travel Buddies

I didn’t know the man. I had never met him. Even that morning I didn’t know his name. Yet there I was, sobbing uncontrollably at the news of his death.

I had just taken my kids in to their school and when I came back to my car there was a text message from a friend. Her father had died. My heart broke for her and in the process reminded me of how shattered my heart still was. The violent, gasping sobs were for her. And for me.

A little more than a month before my own mother had died. The socially acceptable public grieving period was over. The sympathy cards had stopped. Few people mentioned her death or my loss. I was back to work and life was moving on. To the rest of the world, my mother’s death was no more than a speed bump. To me it was the ending of a road off a cliff, yet I was somehow still expected to keep driving.

My mom’s death was a long time coming. Stage IV pancreatic cancer has a life expectancy of a few months. By the time it causes symptoms severe enough to be discovered, the cancer has destroyed the ability of the pancreas to function and has spread to other parts of the body.

Miraculously, my mother survived for three years after the diagnosis. For most of that time she was in mostly good health and we got to have a lot more time together than most people in our situation. I knew I was blessed and I had a lot of time to prepare for the inevitable. I thank God constantly for that time though I sit here typing this with tears pouring down my face.

I knew her death was coming and after the immense pain and suffering she endured, her final passing was a relief – to her and to our family. Knowing that she had been released from her physical pain made my emotional ache feel so selfish. I missed my mom and the time we lost out on, but I was grateful that she wasn’t suffering anymore. I thought I was handling her death very well.

Then my friend’s dad died.

Walking with my friend through her grief has revealed pieces of my own. Witnessing it like a character in a book who is being described so eloquently you can feel the solid pit in the character’s stomach. The ice-cold numbness of their extremities. The inability to breathe because all air and all life has been sucked out of their lungs. Imagining her pain made mine feel even more real.

Our circumstances are very different. Her loss was sudden, mine drawn out. Hers a father, mine a mother. Hers intensified by distance, mine intensified by proximity. Different. But the same.

Loss.

Sadness.

Anger.

Hurt.

Abandonment.

Death.

Grief.

The truth is grief never ends. It evolves. It flows. But it’s always there. It molds itself to your life and is a constant presence. Some days it’s front and center. Some days it’s mere background noise. Some days the pain is a dull throb. Some days it has you bent over struggling for air. The best you can ever hope for is learning to live with it. To allow it to be in your life because pushing it away A. Doesn’t work and B. Takes more effort than it gains in peace. Time does not heal all wounds. It only gathers you more fellow travelers on this journey of grief.

“How lucky I am to have known someone and something that saying goodbye is so damned awful.” – E.G. Valens, The Other Side of the Mountain