Alright, it has been too long since I posted, and I am sorry for that. It has been a very interesting month and I am sure I will post more on that later, maybe.
For now, I wanted to share another excerpt from a future project. This is not from the book that will be out soon, this project will hopefully see the light of day within the next year or so.
It is a short book about grief and what I have learned while going through this process and having many conversations.
I hope this encourages you and reminds you that you are not alone in the grieving process.
This is fresh from my brain, so when you see this in an actual book, it may look different, or maybe it won’t even make the cut, who knows?
Back to this idea that time heals all things. I am living proof this is not the way that healing works. This would mean there is no effort on my part and all I have to do is wait a certain period of time and I will feel better again. I was reading a book not long ago (The Grieving Brain by Mary Frances O’Conner) This book presented the idea that if time truly heals all wounds then someone who has been in a coma should come out of the coma already through the grieving process.
Unfortunately, this would not work. Let’s say in this situation, two friends are in a car wreck and one dies and the other is in a coma for three years, when the friend in the coma wakes up, even though three years have past the grief will just be starting because while they may have had time, they have not had any experience.
You can’t have new experiences without the passing of time but you can definitely let time pass without these new experiences, the real problem is when we shut ourselves off from them. When those moments of grief hit the hardest (even years later) are when we experience something that we used to experience with the person we lost or when we experience something that we know they would love and we would love to share with them. When I look at my childhood, I can see multiple examples of things I didn’t know how to deal with because I didn’t understand this concept.
Ever since I was old enough to use the oven, I enjoyed cooking. When my mom and brother were at work, it would be up to me to have dinner ready for my dad when he got home. This would usually make my day look something like waking up, doing whatever school work I was able to, reading a book, or playing outside for a while, and then at about five o’clock, I would start my chores while feeling anxious that I waited too long to do them.
I would make sure the kitchen was clean, the table was cleared and wiped down, dishes were done, and then I would start cooking something for dinner. Usually something very easy, hamburger helper, spaghetti, or my attempt at baking chicken.
Around seven o’clock, I would be on high alert, this was around the time that you could start expecting to hear my dad’s truck coming up the driveway. Don’t get me wrong, I was not nervous about him coming home before I was done with all of these things. I was just a boy who wanted to make his dad proud.
It was like playing a game with myself each and every evening, can I get all of these things done before I heard my dad pulling up? I still do this, just with my wife now. I love to have dinner ready by the time I hear her keys unlocking the front door. It brings me joy to have something (hopefully good) ready to eat when someone comes in from a long day at work.
These nights growing up usually went something like this, my dad would come home, we would eat dinner together and then if he had the time we would watch a movie or watch TV together, I know he is where I got my love of movies from. Some nights he would be a few minutes late getting home because he would stop at a local video store and rent us a movie to watch, these nights were some of my favorites.
Fast forward to the weeks after he died, these memories never came up because there was no reason for them to. Mom and Chris hadn’t gone back to work yet and we were spending every evening together, there was still no silence. Even after they started working again, we made plans where I had one of my friends over in the evenings to play video games and just to keep me from being alone, so I still felt fine even though a month had passed.
Then came the night that I was finally home alone, it went well at first, I probably played some sort of video game to distract myself for a bit. My grandma lived next door so I am sure I went to spend some time with her and we probably even had dinner together, I can’t say for sure.
What I can remember is, a little after seven o’clock that evening, a truck went up our road that sounded so much like my dad’s truck and for a brief moment I had the thought that he was home. This was how my brain knew to process this information, it was the right time, that was the right noise, and it can only mean the same thing that it has meant for the last few years of my life.
I had already had enough time to mentally know that my dad was not coming home, I didn’t need more time. What I needed was enough new experiences to let my brain know that this noise no longer meant what it used to mean and that seven o’clock was not as significant as it used to be.
If I knew then what I know now about this process it would have saved me so much pain. When something hurt, I wanted to avoid it. This seemed like the right choice. Hearing my dad’s truck pull up when my brother drove it home was hard to handle, so we sold it. (I am sure there were other reasons but I can’t remember them)
Instead of trying to make new memories and have new experiences, I shut myself off from anything that would bring up these feelings of overwhelming grief. Something as small as watching a cheesy action movie or going to a Chinese buffet became things that I actively attempted to avoid.
I just assumed that those things would no longer play a part in my life, that chapter was over. If I could no longer find the same joy in those things without him, there was no reason to try and include them in my life.
A few years after he died, my band wanted to eat at a Chinese buffet and of course, I was not going to be the one to tell them that we shouldn’t. So we went, to my surprise, I had a great time eating mediocre Chinese food with my best friends. We laughed, talked about music, and ate way too much. It was exactly what I needed to let me know that I didn’t need to cut these things out of my life, I needed to make new experiences with them.
I cannot say enough how healing it has been to actively seek out the kind of Chinese buffet my dad would have loved and go there with my wife. These are some of my favorite date nights. I love getting some friends together and watching a cheesy action movie and loving every minute of it the way that I used to.
When we expect time to be the thing that heals us or takes us through the grieving process, I believe we are putting false expectations on time, and ourselves. As I have already stated, time will just make us more of what we already are. If we are determined to avoid the things that make us feel grief, instead of embracing new experiences, time will only make us more isolated and depressed because we have a growing list of things, people, places, and activities to avoid and I am sure most days come with adding something new to this list.
I have learned that it is much better to allow yourself to grieve in these moments and embrace the new experience. It is okay to laugh with my wife while eating sesame chicken and also shed a tear because I will never come here with my dad. You can hold onto both of those things at the same time without putting any pressure on yourself. I don’t care if it has been fifteen years since they died, you are still allowed to cry at the movies because you know your dad would have loved that one-liner Jason Statham delivered before killing the bad guy.
Thank you for reading, and as always, I hope my story can encourage you. If you are experiencing grief, find people you can talk to, do not go through this alone, and do not shut yourself off from having new experiences.