Acceptance

I was on the phone with one of my cousins yesterday and she asked me what makes things easier now....since I have mentioned that life is easier now than it was right after losing Max.  Sometimes I forget that unless you have experienced this kind of pain, you don't really know what I am talking about.  Since so many grievers really long to be understood, I am going to try and explain.

When Max first died - it was sudden and unexpected.  I fed him some bananas and greek yogurt for breakfast, carried him into daycare, kissed him on his sweet face and fully expected to pick him up that evening for bath time and more kisses.  I NEVER expected to get a call saying that he'd stopped breathing and that he was in the emergency room.  I NEVER expected my brand new baby, who I was falling more madly in love with each day, to die for no reason.  It took me a long time to accept that this even happened.  Even today, I barely believe it did.  I love Max with all of my heart. I always will. 

When it first happened, I was cushioned by shock.  It is your body's natural response to deep emotional pain and trauma.  Shock softens the blow.  Shock was the reason that I was able to act like a friendly hostess at my son's funeral and shiva.  It is the reason that so many people were misled into thinking that I was fine and would be ok.  I felt out of my body for weeks, until I woke up one day and realized that he was actually gone and that I would never see my most beloved boy again.  Then the horror set in.  It was like living in my worst nightmare.  I couldn't bare to breathe.  People kept interacting with me like I was still the hostess from the shock period.  It made me hate the shocked me who had misled them.  Their expectations of where I "should be" were completely crazy.  I wanted to die.  Life was way too painful....it often still is.

The horror and pain got worse and worse, every day for about 6 months.  I couldn't focus on anything other than Max being dead.  There was nothing sweet or angelic about his "passing", as people tried to imply.  It was complete horror.  To think otherwise is to be kidding yourself.  People said really stupid things to me (they still do) and I still debate every day whether or not to share them in this space because they would simply make your jaw drop.  I have never shared the very worst stuff here because it is just too horrible.  Because people don't understand how terrible grief is, they aren't sensitive....and for some reason, they are unapologetic about it.  In fact, they are mean and defensive about the terrible things they say....because "they meant well".  Sometimes they really didn't.  On top of being so deeply sad about losing Max, I was angry about how cruel people can be (it still boggles my brain).

As time goes on, your view of the world changes.  Accepting a new reality makes living in that reality easier, because for the first few months or years, you spend a lot of time fighting the new world view.  You are hoping that somehow everything will go back to how it was.  It won't.  The biggest part of that is realizing that your loved one isn't coming back.  The smallest part is realizing that people you once really liked are actually pretty shallow. You start to accept all of this and life becomes easier.  The acceptance doesn't make your grief go away.  It doesn't make the loss any easier.  It just saves you the energy of fighting what is.  When I say that life is easier - I should be clear - it is nowhere near easy.  I am not the person I was.  I never will be.  Never.  I still spend all of moments of the days of my life longing for Max.  I imagine I always will.  But I am adjusting to the pain....learning to live with it.  Somehow that makes it easier.