This is grief.
I found out late last night that my first friend (her mom and mine met in recovery after we were born) lost her son Aidan yesterday after a very sudden hospitalization just a few days ago. We weren’t close, but he was near Sami’s age and this just hits very close to home for me, I feel as though her pain is mine, though I probably can’t begin to imagine what she must actually be feeling.
I mulled it over through the night, and just when I was most struggling to figure out how a world where a tiny kid can die so suddenly, this morning I received news that a local friend is pregnant. I know how to process joy, that seems to translate well across cultures, but I’ve never known what to do with grief.
It seems so, so unfair. I know that not everything is fair or makes sense, and even trying to see that the one joy balances the one loss is a dismal view for Bridget, Aidan’s mom.
I don’t know how to process this all. In response, I have disassembled my kitchen and cleaned and reorganized a lot of things. I’ve repurposed glass and plastic containers, discarded expired products, pulled out items no longer of use in preparation to make arrangements to give them away. (Funny how cognitive dissonance, the friction between sorrow and joy, yields to compulsive productivity.) I’ve thrown myself mentally into housework and helping the new parents-to-be because that’s a more comfortable mental space to be in.
Obviously, some good will come of this. I’m reminded of how much I love my daughter, even on days where I threaten to sell her on eBay. My kitchen is cleaner and closer to clutter-free. A growing family will give new life to stuff Sami and I don’t need any more. Non-baby related stuff will go to help someone else in need, thanks to freecycle. And I’m already brewing a post about ways to use less stuff while still running a normal American kitchen.
I need to take a moment, though, to face my pain head on, because wrapping up with a chipper resolution I frequently do, and it sort of serves to write off the pain. I can’t do that – this is probably my first real adult grief, and I need to learn to deal with it aside from bright sides. Somehow, I live in a world full of the injustice of children dying; this, like war, disease and poverty, is a bitter but real fact of life, and can’t be ignored nor wished away. Life goes on, but I need to learn how to feel what I’m feeling.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Lambo family today, and I hope that they feel relief from their mourning soon.
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That’s awful. My thoughts are with that family today, and I’m sending you a hug as well.
uccellina´s last blog post..It only looks innocent.
I have so few words when I read something like this — I can only nod along.
Keet´s last blog post..A teeny tiny Snape for Keri