sweet relief in grief
Something has stirred my father into my waking thoughts more than usual lately, of course Father's Day weekend is an obvious reason, but if feels like something more--perhaps our wedding, now less than 4 months away...? Whatever it is, I've found myself grieving again. I think about all of the things my Dad is missing, how he'd be a grandfather of six (soon to be 7) grandchildren. How he won't get to walk me down the aisle, or ever get to know my sweet, kind, wonderful ChicagoBoy.
I keep thinking of C.S. Lewis', A Grief Observed, the solace I felt in reading it upon my fathers death; Lewis and I kindred spirits in our mourning.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
ChicagoBoy went grocery shopping yesterday and upon returning handed me a bouquet of flowers. I almost wept as I thought of a time my father snuck away from my mother at the grocery store to buy flowers and leave them for her in the car, a sweet surprise. ChicagoBoy said the flowers were, "just because," but as he held me and told me he loved me, I knew they were because he knows the grief-animal wass sitting on my chest, making me a little jealous of his Father's Day phone call to his own dad.
This morning work will distract me, and perhaps each day after the miasma-fog will clear, the tide pull away from shore again and reveal smoothed rocks and tide-pools...
I keep thinking of C.S. Lewis', A Grief Observed, the solace I felt in reading it upon my fathers death; Lewis and I kindred spirits in our mourning.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
ChicagoBoy went grocery shopping yesterday and upon returning handed me a bouquet of flowers. I almost wept as I thought of a time my father snuck away from my mother at the grocery store to buy flowers and leave them for her in the car, a sweet surprise. ChicagoBoy said the flowers were, "just because," but as he held me and told me he loved me, I knew they were because he knows the grief-animal wass sitting on my chest, making me a little jealous of his Father's Day phone call to his own dad. This morning work will distract me, and perhaps each day after the miasma-fog will clear, the tide pull away from shore again and reveal smoothed rocks and tide-pools...
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