Now Comes the Hard Part

     When someone you love dies, even when it is expected, it is a shock. God gives, what I call, gracethesia to get us through those times because there are many things that have to be done in those first days of loss--calls and decisions to make, a memorial to plan, feeding those gathered at your house, thank you notes. A grim business agenda accompanies death. And despite the difficulty, it feels good to do those things, to do what remains to be done to honor the one you love. And then the funeral is over, the guests go home, all that remains are legal matters and paperwork. And those feel like they are of more benefit to nameless bureaucracy, or the survivor, than the person who died.
   Now comes the hard part. After about a month, God begins to back off the grace because a responsible anesthesiologist does not leave his patient numb longer than necessary, even if it causes pain. Numbness is meant to be a resting place, not a lifestyle. Friends and family go back to their own lives and homes, but the bereaved cannot. Their life, their home, will not go back to normal. Their new normal is finding out moment by moment, how to be alone, who to call when being alone is too hard to bear. Or decisions are too difficult to make. Or something breaks. Besides their heart. Healing that will take a long time.
   But I know this only from Griefshare and friends who have lost husbands or children. Those losses are different from the ones I have experienced. Losing my mother seven years ago, made no significant difference in my life, and that is a loss in its own way, I suppose. The hard part of grief is that the monument to their memory is made out of our own tears.