Grief is Grey

I find one of the weirdest things is how different it feels.  I mean grief is grief.  It sucks.  But sometimes it blows instead.  You know?

With my dad, it felt like something was standing right in front me not able to see on the other side.  It would block my view and blur my vision.  It would exhaust me just from it's presence.  It would tilt the room and penetrate the air.  It would come so close, my eyes wouldn't work.  I would bend over trying to catch my breathe and stop the world from spinning and fix my eyes on something so the blurriness would go away.  And then I would feel the room stop spinning and remind myself what it looked like before all the madness.  I would start to straighten up, and then "Wham!"  Pop in the stomach again.  Forced to double over this time.  And then it just seemed obvious to walk around, holding, no, protecting my stomach.  Glaring at everyone that approached me.  Analyzing their faces and the knowledge I had of them to access the situation.  Would they know what I was going through.  Or did their attempts at empathy become only self serving.  After blows to the gut, everyone becomes the enemy.  Because really, how could something so large in mass and personality just vanish.  The only thing tangible are blows we keep feeling.

Months later when the ground stops shaking and you don't have to steady yourself just to get out of bed, you start making plans for the future.  And the plans include Mom now.  Because without Dad, Mom will go anywhere to be closer to her grand-babies.  You make plans until one night while brushing their teeth, she calls and asks you if you are sitting down.  You laugh, thinking she's joking.  You talk all the time.  She knows your husband is working late and you are trying to wrestle your children into bed.  So when you slip out a no with a smile on your face, she continues anyway.  "It's cancer, Cassandra."  She says it in her nurse voice that's serious and strong and matter-of-fact.  You abandon your children and their teeth.  You whisper something that allows them to stay up a while longer and be quiet at the same time.  Maybe "books with the lights on til dad gets home" or something equally as nullifying. You go to the dining room.  Sit at the table they gave you.  Ask the stupid questions you will curse people for uttering in a day.

"How long did they give you?"
"Where is it?" "Where did it come from?"
"What's the plan?"

Some answers you eventually get.  Some they never end up having.  That seems to be how cancer sometimes rolls.  Or is it how God rolls.  I am not sure which.

But when she left, it seemed to take forever and at the same time, too quickly.  It left me in the depth of darkness.  Darkness I had never imagined and faulted others for being in.  Two weeks I sat at the bottom of that pit.  No sweeping blows to the gut.  No room spinning.  No one to hold your hand while you steadied yourself.  Everyone seemed to feel her absence differently.  Personally.  And I was left at the bottom of the pit while others soaked in the glow of her life.

Now I sit at the edge.  I'm out.  But my legs dangle there from the side.  Swaying back in forth from the shadow of the pit to the light of the Son.  I no longer see in black and white, but everything is grey.