The Memorial Service

I spent much of the service looking up at her name on the wall.  I spent some of it imagining her there, standing up in the front or in the aisle – and standing there the way that I remember her….white hair pulled back with a hair band and in a ponytail, dark blue sweat pants, those horrible white sneakers with the Velcro (or maybe the blue slippers she wore around the house), and a white shirt that didn’t really fit her anymore because she had lost weight.   It was painful to be there.  The woman that speaks at the service has had a very hard time in this life – she’s lost yet another child, this makes three, and a husband.  And even in her religious life (she’s an ordained minister), she still is able to say that she has felt robbed and she has felt forsaken and she has felt alone in her times of grief.  (The typical religious banter is that we are never truly alone, God is with us at all times and He will support you and see you through the storm.) She said that there were many nights she sat up and asked why her daughter and not her.  She herself battled cancer, and yet her daughter fought and lost.  And through it all – there she stood.  She stood there in front of a crowd of I don’t know how many people, telling her story and telling us it’s okay.  It’s okay to grieve in whatever way you need to grieve and don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s okay to question God, it’s okay to question your friendships, it’s okay to question your faith and to question yourself.  And I found her words comforting only because there have been so many times that I wondered what the hell am I doing, why isn’t there a manual, how could this be right, why didn't I do more, why did it have to happen now, what is wrong with me….and it’s okay because it’s how I’ve dealt with it. She also acknowledged that there are times in this process when you feel like you’re doing pretty good and then suddenly WHAM, the grief hits you like a huge wave and you’re right back down on your knees.   I think that’s the hardest part on this journey – just when you think you’ve gotten on top of it and you’re feeling good about how far you’ve come (when was the last time I cried, when was the last time I wanted to drown my sorrows into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s), it slaps you again and you feel like you are right back at the start.

Grief sucks.  There’s no way around it, there’s no way to sugar coat it and say “it’ll all be better soon” because that’s not true. My best friend died almost 6 years ago and there are still days when I just miss her.  I miss her laugh, I miss the way she used to dance when U2 came on the radio.  I miss the way she used to make me laugh no matter what was going on in my life and I would give almost anything to see her again and to hear her laugh again.  She was a great woman who left us way too soon.  And there are some days, even now, that I just want to sit and cry because she’s gone.  She’s gone and there is so much I wish she could be here for; I feel the exact same way about my Mom, although I think that makes me sadder because it’s newer.  It does get easier, but it is never going to be ‘better’ or ‘normal’ again.  It’s a new normal, I suppose; and that normal will just have to do.