It’s been five months of grief. People are happy to see me slowly coming back, especially when I meet my class. I have to excuse myself not to open my camera on so they cannot see the real me and hide from who I am now. I am so good at faking it that even my children are amazed. They saw me struggle before and after my class and how I feel exhausted trying to be stronger than I feel.
Since the school year started, I find myself going through the daily motion of meeting my class and, in between, my administrative job. I am blessed to have people around in school who understands and do not overwhelm me with issues. They know that I am not what I used to be and I need to process the information slowly. I always find God’s favor because we never had any significant situation that required immediate and big decisions that could affect our department.
Grief is full of surprises. It disappears in a minute and reckons with greater strength soon after. You cannot prepare for it because it does not provide warning at all. You find yourself lost in the middle of nowhere, weeping and smiling and, in a split second, angry and numb.
Grief can also make you do what you never thought you could do. This is one of the reasons why I am afraid to be with people because I panic. I do not know how to behave in front of them, I do not like to be seen, talked to, or with, and worst, pity me. However, most of the time, I can be very confident that I end up sharing my grief with people and make them uncomfortable and eventually have to avoid me. I felt better after expressing my pent-up emotions, but I end up regretting them because I knew I lost them, just like the others. I know this because they stopped checking on me after that conversation.
I was overly honest with myself, and I had a hard time learning to drop expectations from others. I have been cautioned not to let go of every emotion I have with people because it is a set-up of an added misery. Part of me is saying, if you do that, you will lose more. There is this feeling that our society does not approve of grief, and we are encouraged to swallow it up and get back to their definition of “normal.”
I have to choose to either stop being true to people, to myself, or isolate myself. I chose the latter, and that is what I have been doing for the last three weeks. I kept quiet and distanced from people who messaged me; the only response was an emoji, or sometimes, I ignored their messages because I was afraid to be hurt. I found myself regressing instead of progressing. I knew that I was doing much better before, but now, I found myself back to square one. Grief took its toll on me again, made a big comeback, a rebound, a reckoning; it is grief at its finest.
My children enjoyed my silence and constant cry for a while soon after. They also grew tired of my whining and weeping but eventually saw that I was not getting any better. They went to the point of begging me to talk to them, which I finally did because I saw them suffer in my silence. I am thankful to a very importunate (one of my husband’s favorite words) friend, who reminded me to praise God still and claim His promise in Hebrews 13:14, translated as this world is not our home. We are just pilgrims and just passing through, a reminder also of one of my husband’s favorite phrases and songs, and we are not supposed to be comfortable here, and God is with me in this journey, even if I do not feel Him for, He keeps His promise.
True enough, I failed to acknowledge God’s presence and His boundless grace. I was unable to recognize the people that He is sending and using until this day. I focused on those who left, not on those who stayed and the new ones that came. I forgot to appreciate that there are still people who continuously send help and support. Some of them were from my darling’s circle when he was still in the corporate world, whose lives he touched and never forgot; others were friends who have been walking right along beside me through their random messages and cheering me on as I learn to find my way through. With these friends, I see Christ; God is hugging me through their hands, God is speaking to me words of comfort and assurance of His love and peace through their words.
Many of these people were just my acquaintances then and people I never even met; their prayers are the ones that are holding me on; I know the Lord is slowly leading me through this storm; it is only a matter of time. I am growing through grief with Him.
It is still hard and painful to remember how broken everything was; the pain of remembering is impossibly hard but, it is far outweighed by the beauty of my darling’s life. As I share and continue, I hope that lessons can be learned with my encounter with grief, knowing there are people like me, who never wants to be in our place, a place that we did not choose, being led to a journey via the boulevard of grief. For how far and how long, I do not know. I have to put my hope and trust in God, for HE is our ALL after all.