Not Shutting the Door

I was today years old when I realized, I keep the door shut on grief.

My daughter asked me to go for a walk with her.  Having been in class and sitting for much of the day, I welcomed the idea of exercising and so we started out.  She talked about high school and when she almost made state throwing discus before Covid shut everything down.  I took the opportunity to bring up her need to believe in herself, to trust her accomplishments.  We discussed the hazard of being the middle child, where you compare yourself constantly and find yourself wanting.

We also discussed gumbo because she’d made her first today.   She’d talked to my sister who was supposed to visit this week, but life happened and so I’d been trying to reassure her (my sister) it was okay, to state the mature, responsible thing we’re supposed to say when plans get wrecked by life.   She’d been saying how disappointed she was –and I admittedly had felt like, “why would you say that?” in my head, because it just reinforced being sad as opposed to reframing it –my trick for dealing with disappointment.

Fortunately, my daughter is quick on the uptake, and pointed out, “Aren’t you sad?”  and the answer was of course I’m unhappy that things didn’t work out.  She mentioned I am a people pleaser, and as such, don’t allow myself to feel the things as they happen if it will make other people unhappy.   “How are you doing with missing your mom? It’s been more than six months.”

Unbidden, I imagined a door at the end of a hallway, and almost cartoonish indications of needing to open the door, of arms wanting to get out.  I didn’t want to throw it open. I wanted to keep it shut.  I even felt my eyes tearing up, and me fighting to squash down the feelings that threatened our walk, the cool of the evening, the calm I’d imposed.

“You have to let yourself grieve.” I’d been told.  I heard it in my mom’s voice.

The trouble was, I didn’t know how.  Except I did.  Throw open the door.  Let yourself feel all of it, in all of its crushing weight, because otherwise, you deny the great gift of our faith, the promise that this weight won’t be the final answer.  The greater we understand the grief we otherwise must shoulder, the more we should rejoice in our savior.  I needed to be sad, to be bored sad, to be unhappy sad, to be grieving damn it I miss my mom sad.   “What do you miss about her?” my daughter took the opportunity to press.

“I talked to her almost every day, and as such, she became a sounding board, a place to tell stories, to enjoy telling the stories. Between the blog and her, I stopped letting myself share who I was outside of the writing world. I didn’t need to.  Now, I find it hard to go to adoration because I’m tired of the silence in my life.  I’m tired of not having someone to tell the stories to.”  She hugged me.  “It’s okay to feel sad.”  I hadn’t written about losing my mom because that would force the words out, and the tears.

Overcoming one’s own stupid tendencies to box up pain, to “be strong,” is hard, as hard as opening that imaginary door, as hard as staring at the picture on my phone of my mother.  I took it on purpose, so I could have that last look at her face.  The priest offered me the crucifix, but I took the rosary.  I find it hard to pray on those beads, she held them. She prayed on them.  More silence, silence by me this time.

Since Mom died, mass, prayer, writing, all of it has been effort.  Because all of those things involve pouring out onto the page.  I’ve not wanted to let myself feel that much.  So everything, from tears to words, has been damned up, damn it.  I’d need to let myself feel “all the feels,” if I wanted both to honor my mom, and to be able to bear the loss in a healthy manner.

Coming home, I called my sister if only to say, I missed her, and found the rosary I’d kept.  Time to tell the Blessed Mother my stories. Time to write.  Time to let tears fall.  Time to open the door, maybe slowly, but eventually all the way.

Time to remind myself, there are worse things than feeling sad, feeling still because you won’t let yourself feel, is one of them.