It's been eight months without Griffin here. It's not new anymore to the rest of the world, but for my heart it might as well be yesterday. I've learned to live with this better than not most days, that is the price of love, after all. But then I got a notice from my HOA about the weeds in my yard, and it was my utter undoing.
The spool has only continued to unravel since then.
After a rocky start, struggling to find work, and an accident that left me with a solid concussion and some injuries to heal from, life turned the corner. My husband and I both found good jobs we are happy at, we can see a financial light at the end of all the medical bills and debt incurred for the first time in years, our two children here are healthy and thriving, we've traveled and made memories this summer, we've found joy, we've found purpose and opportunities to help others and give back...we have been blessed and life has been good. And that hurts to say, even as I share it with so much gratitude. But we live with the mixed bag that living without Griffin here brings. Never again will anything be singularly joyous or devastating or any one thing - they all just live together all of the time. That's the price love and grief demands of you.
But then I had a few weeds in my yard and the HOA decided to make an issue of it. As I held the paper in my hands with the evidentiary photo of the three offending weeds and "friendly" reminder of the bylaws we signed our souls too, I wanted to wad it up in a ball and chuck it at the next board member I saw, screaming as I hit my mark, "Don't you know what happened?! Have you no patience?! Are weeds, honestly, your BIGGEST concern?! I'm soooooo glad you have nothing better to do or fuss over in your life than your pristine yard being maintained to constant perfection, and everyone else’s with it!"
It wasn't my finest mental moment; and to be completely honest the yard work was a few weeks overdo. But seriously, I'm pretty sure we deserve a gold medal for keeping up our home and lot as well as we have under the circumstances of this year.
More than that, in the business that life, work, back to school, and all the things brought, it was a fresh slap in the face that life is moving on without Griffin in it. My life is moving on, and I don't want it to in so many ways on so very many days.
It's not that I EVER forget that Griffin isn't here. That knowledge beats and echoes in my every waking moment as freely as my own heartbeat; half of my soul lays thread bare even as I know that this is the natural progression of things. But damn it, it HURTS. It hurts that so often in my outside world I am the only one who says his name in every day conversation anymore. It hurts that we all are moving on with the business of life, as if the world didn't completely implode. It hurts that the farther I get from the time he was here, that so-full-lifetime we fit into a few short years, feels like a memory I can't quite recall or a past life I'm trying to remember.
It hurts that this ticking time bomb is there to go off every day at any moment, as we move through what naturally happens when someone isn't here anymore, and we grow braver to keep living:
I finally finished Reagan's room - and then I sat on the bed crying because it was supposed to be Griffin's room, and I dearly dreamed once of making the space he loved so well, just as special for him too. I kept wiping the onslaught of tears away as I mustered the strength to take down some of their baby items from the dresser and lovingly tucked them into keepsake boxes, as I silently noted, again, that his scent keeps fading - and it broke me more still that, little by little, so much of my tangible proof he was here once will slowly disappear.
The house has sat pretty much the same as it was when Griffin lived here still since we got home from California. I finally got brave enough to start organizing, deep cleaning, and rearranging things to better fit our current life and needs - and I've sobbed every time I've finished changing something because it makes it so real that Griffin isn't coming back, that he doesn't have needs anymore I can rearrange life and fill, that he really only lives in our hearts and memories now. It feels like a betrayal somehow, no matter what I know and how much I rationalize it.
Reagan is turning two next week and I'm so excited, grateful, and overjoyed at all her life, triumphs, and joy - and I'm devastated that this was the last birthday of Griffin's we got with him, that we won't get anymore; that in 8 months and 19 days she'll be older than Griffin ever got to be - and I'm devastated that that hurts just as much as it brings me so much gratitude and joy.
Urijah is starting his sophomore year and talking about all the things he dreams of doing after high school and working towards that, and I am filled with pride and elated. I lean into, soak up, and borrow all his hope and brilliant belief that adulthood holds nothing but wonders and wins. I am filled with reticence that our years raising him are coming closer and closer to it's close, even as I celebrate that we get this part with him and hold it so very close, because I know how fragile it is - and I mourn the conversations, dreams, and hopes that will never be had with Griffin like this.
I booked a trip for just me to Sedona, the first trip I've taken without my family or thing I've done for myself in eight years. I'm waiting with baited breath (much as I adore my family and know I will miss them) for a chance to hike the red rocks of the high desert, to sit quietly among God's beautiful creation and soak up the sun and sky, sip wine and eat only what I want while no one is there to ask me to fill their needs, and giggle with my favorite people late into the night with no where to be and nothing to do when the sunrises - and my heart shatters that I know I only get to go do this now because Griffin - the person who became my biggest purpose, who needed me the most, whose life I so happily and readily gave all of mine to - isn't here anymore. I get to find the new me, only because I was stripped of the me I was and most wanted to be. I would give anything to be her again if I could have him back.
I write for a living now, one of my childhood dreams come true. I revel in the research, the puzzle, and the crafting of words that fill my work day. I celebrate the blessings bestowed on me and I relish the exhaustion when the day is done - and then I fight back the tears that I have no more energy or time to give in the day to writing Griffin's story and memories for him. The guilt and heartache washes over me every day as I walk down my stairs to make dinner for my family still here, spend time with them making memories I don't get to make with Griffin anymore, and take another step towards my now and future, while taking another farther away from the time he was here and part of those things.
And it goes on....and on, and on. Every day some new joy or progress is laced with grief and hurt, and the thread of my life is wound back up as it unravels a little bit more too.
I know this is normal. I know this is how it's supposed to go as we walk through healing and time. I know there is room for all these feelings and thoughts to coexist, that they should coexist - I wouldn’t want it any other way if this is the only choice of keeping him here in some way. I know you have to be unraveled before you can be made better and whole again. But oh, does it hurt bone-deep, and how I wish this wasn't the life I was given to love now.
I miss you endlessly Griffin, and I love you even more.
Photo by furkanfdemir
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