Three

I stopped writing after the first year. At least regularly writing. At first the need to write was like an urgent, pressing need. There was just so much to process, so much to share, so much to express and I had to get it out before it all jumbled up into the next experience or feeling. Like train cars smashing and piling into the one before it. In the very beginning I felt like I could write 3 or 4 times a day. Gradually it slowed to one writing a day, every few days, once a week, and then really pushing myself to get something posted once a week. Gradually it felt like the immense train came to a rolling stop in one place, bellowing out exhausted black smoke, giving me time to step out and survey the strange, sad, desolate land of my arrival. You might be wondering what it was like, after the fire and the crisis. What does life, as we must call it, look like then? The best I can say is that it was foggy, slow, and tender. It was like rehab and recovery. Painful, necessary, full of steps forward and steps backward. Nothing to write about, really. Just the daily pumping up of the will to go on, even though there was an evident leak in the balloon. Not really moving on, just choosing to try over and over again. It was mundane and hard. 

But it has been three years now, and I think there are some things to report. Eventually you make more steps forward than back. You find there is new scenery. Things begin to bloom again. So while Grief is still here, so is the engine of life. 

Grief has come in and made herself a home here. She is gentle and quiet sometimes, minding her own business. Sometimes she makes me step up to the plate and do the hard work of remembering. I can feel it coming and I know I must carve out the time to surrender to it. I know this is going to seem strange, but I actually look forward to giving myself that time. The crying does not feel bad. The remembering does not feel bad. Honoring what I have lived through and the great loss of Jonah’s physical presence does not feel bad. It is just love by another name. To feel the enormity and never-ending nature of the thing only affirms how real that love really is when sometimes it begins to feel like it was just a dream. He was real. He was really here. The love between us was almost indescribably incandescent. Every moment of those 25 years was a gift. These moments of deep grief help me connect to what was before and remind me how vibrant and integral it still is in my life's story. So Grief is still here. She is my life’s companion now and we are finding a rhythm as roommates. 

Another thing to report is that Jonah is not gone. The relationship isn’t over, but it has changed. He is still with me, but I have had to learn to listen differently. Sometimes I hear him in my head. Sometimes I feel him in my body. Sometimes he sends me songs. Sometimes birds. Sometimes memes. I see him in clocks. In skies. In signs. Once I started listening differently, he showed up everywhere and the more I noticed, the more he showed up. Believe me when I tell you there is magic. He makes me laugh, he astonishes me, he gives me goosebumps sometimes. And I can still feel his love all around me. 

So I think I will start writing again. Sometimes I will be telling the story of my relationship with Grief, but maybe more often I will be telling you about my amazing Jonah and all the ways he still shows up and loves on his Momma. 

My friends, I mostly want you to know that even though this is still so hard, my life is also full of daily miracles. I am being sustained through my faith and my boy in ways that are utterly breathtaking at times. I know you wonder, pray, and think of me often, so maybe this will give you a way to walk with me. 

And just maybe you will be blessed by the workings of the unseen, too.