Getting over it

Not long after my mother-in-law, Rickie by name, died, my family and I took a trip to Disney World, a trip on which she had planned to join us. That's important fact #1 for this story. Important fact #2 is that my wife, a ceramicist (fancy word for "potter"), was in the process of making an urn for the burial of her ashes. The implications of "in the process" is that Rickie's cremated remains were being stored in our house until the completion of the urn. At work one day I was telling a friend about the planned trip and how Rickie had planned to come. I said somewhat casually, "But, come to think of it, we could put her under the front seat and she still could come." My friend was horrified and responded, "Well, YOU seem to be over it."

Notwithstanding the black sense of humor I seem to have inherited from my family, this little anecdote makes me think about what it means to be "over" something, especially grief and loss. Having experienced a fair amount of the grief and loss thing I have learned a couple of lessons.

First, making light of loss is not necessarily a sign of having gotten over it. One of the ways in which we deal with the uncomforatble feelings of grief and loss is by alleviating the tension with humor. I remember when my grandfather died, one of my uncles who drove some of the grandchildren to the internment made a number of (very bad) death jokes on the way in the car. The levity is a way of dodging the uncomfortable feelings of grief. It has a part to play in the process but it cannot go on forever. Avoiding the real sadness over a long period has repercussions.

Second, loss is not just the death of someone we know and love. There is grief and sadness when we lose a job, or move to a new town. There is loss when something we hoped for and dreamed about turns out to be impossible.

Third, there is no statute of limitations on grief and loss. There is a pressure, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, to be done with it and move on with life. Our friends, at times, are anxious for us to be "over it" and back to normal. Sometimes that is a pressure we put on ourselves because we think that we should be done by now.

But the sadness creeps up on us unexpectedly. Things that remind us of any loss bring the breath-taking sharpness back as we are still in the process. Just this morning I put on a Veggie Tales video for a small mob of children who happen to be at my house. My kids are WAY past the Veggie Tales stage by now and the theme song, a familiar strain of a time that, for me, is now gone, brought tears to my eyes. Do I regret that my children have grown up and become adults? Absolutely not. But this small reminder of what is gone touched the well of sadness from larger losses. And those small tears were a gift to me.

I don't know when we should be "over it". Even when we are, we are not unchanged, and there is a new normal. The most recent "big" loss in our family happened last summer when my sister-in-law died. And now, nearly a year later, my wife and I are planning an extended leave from work this summer because we aren't over it yet. And until we take the time to come face to face with it, instead of making light or busying ourselves with frenetic activity, we will never get over it.

Buddy Greene, known (apparently) for his praise harmonica - a little known musical genre - sings a song whose chorus is pertinent here:
Where the pieces of our lives go unattended
Then scars from broken hearts go unmended
And the feelings we've forgotten overtake us like a flood
That's how it always is with flesh and blood
That how it has to be with flesh and blood