Waves
Grief is something that comes in waves. At the beginning it’s just a continuous overwhelming tsunami that sweeps you away and consumes you and you have to fight your way to the top again and again. Sometimes it pulls you back down for awhile, but you manage to fight your way back up. Then slowly, slowly, the waves begin to lessen and you go under less frequently, until one day you stop going down and you float along on the gentle lapping waves toward the shore. And finally, you are deposited on the beach and there you spend your days, digging in the sand, building sand castles, sunbathing, and collecting seashells until another great wave crashes onto you and drags you back out to sea. But now you’re a master swimmer and you can fight your way back to shore a little faster. There are no more tsunamis, no more tidal waves, just the occasional big wave that tries to drag you back out into the sea of grief, but you don’t let it anymore. You fight your way back. Faster and faster every time. But no matter how often you fight your way back, there will always be a wave that pulls you out now and then. The time between the waves gets longer and longer, but they still come crashing onto the shore every once in awhile. And sometimes they are just small little tides that cover your feet but don’t pull you all the way in. Such is grief.
My mom has been gone for almost seven years now. And for the most part my grief is quiet tides covering my feet. But now and again, there are loud crashing waves that threaten to drag me back down into that sea of grief.
This weekend amidst all the joy of my daughter’s birthday, I missed my mother terribly. The older she gets, the harder it is not to have my mother here to share it with me, because I know how very much she would love that little girl – almost as much as I do.
But, I cannot let the grief overwhelm me, because she wouldn’t want it to be that way. And really, she is here. In every smile, every laugh, every jut of the jaw and wave of my daughter’s hand. She’s here in a molecular way because of mitochondrial dna, of course, but she’s here in the spirit of a little girl who I know my mother sent to me to keep me from drowning in the waves of grief for the rest of my life.
I miss my mother every day, but I delight and rejoice in my daugher, who is my physical bond to my mother. Sometimes my grief is loud, but the loudness is fleeting and the quiet grief is what remains. My mother is in my heart and in my daughter. And therefore, she will always be with me.
