--Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk
A quote from the book, "healing through the dark emotions."
I was going to just put the quote, by itself on the blog today. But, I am driven to write more.
I hate this book, I'm not sure why I keep reading it.
I had given up on grief books for the last six weeks or so.
But this one offered, " the wisdom of grief, fear and despair."
I'm not finding much help in the wisdom. Or maybe I am, through my annoyance.
Sometimes we are most annoyed by the "ring of truth." I will say something that really annoys Tony, and then two weeks later he will repeat it to me and say how much sense it makes. Sometimes we are just not ready for a concept or idea, and I think that's where I am with this book. So, I thought journaling about it might help me make sense of it. It is my hope that by journaling and then sharing the journal I will somehow make sense of what happened. Somehow understand how to move forward. A part of me says that maybe if I do this grief thing right, Lev will come back, like it's a reality tv show, a sort of evil game. I will have proven myself and we will have it reversed, and be set back on our "correct" path of life, the one that we live like so many other people, with both our children alive. I choose the other life, the one with the four of us, I don't choose this one. I do feel like my heart is more whole, I love more. I love Jaal and Tony and everyone more, but it is because my heart is searching for Lev. And I cannot find him.
(pause to cry for a while and get a tissue...)
According to this book, I am supposed to find a way to "surrender" to these emotions.
It is a statement about "life's inherent uncertainty". "Learn to tolerate the unpredictability and chaos of existence."
I am not ready to do that. I am angry and frustrated that Lev's existence was cut so short. I do not tolerate it. I want to find some solution, some way to reverse what happened.
They say that the death of a child is the hardest type of loss.
They say that the death of a teenager is the hardest time to lose a child.
They say that "ambiguous loss," when you don't know the cause of death, is the hardest type of loss of come to terms with.
And then there is the empty nest, just ten weeks later.
I am being beaten down, and I will need to surrender but it will be a long hard battle.
Acceptance only comes to me in little glimpses.
Missing him, that I have surrendered to.
The fact that your life can be so good one day, and then completely awful the next. That I have trouble with.
Yet we go on. The grief is getting stronger, harder, not easier in any way. But the rest of life is getting a little easier to deal with. I am in a fog, day by day,but we deal with the daily stuff through the fog. I like the rainy days when the world is a bit of a blur.
Today I am mad at myself for having the need to share this journal, yet I do have that need, and I'm not sure why. Am I proving myself to the world? Justifying my existence and Lev's? or just needing others to understand what I know I did not.
