Michele and I have been slowly moving forward from Abby’s death. Both of us have experienced moments of intense grief and moments of relative peace. Several thoughts and ideas have been explored as we process the loss of Abby.
One is that grief, like so many other powerful emotions, has a state trait component. In other words, your emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual state is unique to that situation. Since grief doesn’t happen everyday we aren’t used to the demands it places on us. We were both surprised at the physical exhaustion we felt Thursday evening and Friday. We were also surprised at the depth of our emotions. After talking about it for a while we decided that each of us has unexpressed grief from earlier events in our lives that is being expressed now. Most people aren’t comfortable with the whole grief process and therefore it is rarely ‘safe’ to completely process. As a child, grieving for my sister, I got a very strong sense of ‘okay, move along now,’ when I still had strong feelings of loss, hurt, and anger.
Over the years I have been able to emote those unexpressed emotions, but not until I had a safe place. Michele is my safe place; with her I have no fear of recriminations or come-backs due to my being in my truth. Currently my truth is about grief and remembrance. I alternate between utter sadness about Miss Abby, and great joy at remember all the wonderful ways she touched my life.
Michele gives me a safe place to fall and she doesn’t place any expectations on how or when I need to talk, cry, or rage about this loss. I do the same for her. I could not get through this process as honestly and openly without my dear sweet Love. I thank her for helping to create the wonderful place we call home. And I am honored that she turns to me in the same fashion.
Abby brought so much to us and I am proud that we can honor her memory by fully expressing all the emotions we have about her. There is no time limit and no right way to complete this process. We simply have to be in our truth.