She’s Gone
I felt happy this morning when I hopped into my car and started the engine. Then, as I put the car in drive and pulled away from the cabin, I happened to glance to my left. At the base of my pine tree, I saw the little red fairy door.
A wave of intense sadness flattens me. I know that I will never go to the post office and have a package waiting for me that contains a fairy door, or a pair of chicken leg socks, or a creepy Halloween mask. I will also never receive a thoughtful, unexpected kitchen gadget that my dear friend determined I needed after a recent visit to my home.
Of course, it’s not the gifts that I miss the most. The fairy door was just another one of the thousand daily reminders that caught me off guard. The door pulled me back into the awareness that I had lost my best friend, and I would never see her again.
I’ve never lost a close friend before. Parents, yes, grandparents too, and aunts and uncles galore. But never a dear friend.
I don’t know how to navigate these waters. When will I stop reaching for my cell phone to text or call her? When will I not have the feeling that she is about to call me? When will I stop expecting to see her smiling face as I log into our online weekday Qigong class?
More importantly, when will I stop feeling all of these mixed-up emotions that unexpectedly blindside me?
I know that these feelings are a normal part of the grieving process. And yet, I also know that it is essential not to give myself over to the emotions so completely that I become stuck in a negative spiral. Doing so could result in a loop that would impact my physical and emotional health.
I am aware that I must balance my emotions, but how?
Sometimes I feel so angry that I will never see her smiling face again. When the sadness, anger, or other feelings show up unexpectedly, instead of pushing them away, I attempt to sit with them for a bit. There is a fine line between acknowledging these feelings and not going down the rabbit hole of grief and sorrow. I know, from experience, it does me no good to cross that line.
So I acknowledge the feeling of sadness, and then I recall a happy time. I remember how delighted I felt the time my friend hopped on a last-minute flight so that we could go to the opening night of a movie based on a book that we both loved. Or I remember when we sat side-by-side swishing our feet in the pool at the Chalice Well in England. The well was a special place that she wanted to share with me. I’m so happy that we went on that trip with our husbands. I may have, given my personality, postponed the trip and never made that journey.
I hear the words of one of our last conversations. It is the talk when she tells me that she isn’t ready to die. We both know that she isn’t prepared to leave her children and granddaughter behind. And I hate the disease that took her away from all of us.
I work to pull myself away from this negative state of mind that does me no good. I remember the feeling of joy I felt in her calm, compassionate presence. I remember the joy in her signature all-encompassing, warm, heartfelt hugs that she freely bestowed.
Often, it is the unexpected that brings on a flood of tears. Things that I was barely aware of when she was alive. Today, looking through old photographs, I see her eyeglasses dangling from her necklace. I must have watched her remove her glasses and put them on her chain hundreds of times over the years. She would do this without ever losing eye contact or the thread of our conversation.
Underneath all of these feelings is the fear that I will never be able to fill the void she has left in my life. This fear eases when I recall , with gratitude, the day she walked across a crowded room and introduced herself. If she hadn’t done that, I would never have known her. If I had never known her, I wouldn’t have all of these memories that hurt like heck right now, but for which I am eternally grateful.
I love you Janice.
I miss you.
I thank you for showing up in my life.
With Love & Healing Energy by the Pond,
Laurel
