My inspiration to write today comes from a couple of small things that happened this week, but there are no truly small things, no coincidences.
I wrote earlier this week about how exhausting grief can be and the people who help us shoulder it need breaks from time to time. And, that’s OK, because ultimately, we have to be the ones to carry it- only so much help can be accepted. We will all have to carry our own grief at some time and we only have so much capacity to do so. It’s tough. Within a day of writing that post two of my friends who have been with me on this journey reached out to me and we made plans to get together. Not exactly a miracle. One reads my blog. He might have been prompted by what he read. The other doesn’t read my blog though. Getting together with them is good. It allows me to gauge my progress a bit. I can tell how the conversations are evolving. They’re turning less like counseling sessions with the focus only on me and my grief and more like “normal” conversations. I don’t know if it’s that my grief is less. I don’t know how to quantify it, but it’s more that there’s only so much talking about it can do and only so many ways to keep saying the same thing. I’m here for now. I accept that, but I would take a one way ticket to see Shayna in a heartbeat, no hesitation.
Then today, I hear from my mother. She and I had talked earlier this week and I teased her about not calling anymore. We recently dropped our landline and she said she doesn’t have my cell phone number memorized. We have gone months in the past without talking. It’s not a big deal. It’s just our relationship. We talk occasionally, very sporadically there is no schedule, no typical time frame. After Shayna passed I think she felt more of a need to check in on me. She called more. It’s gone back to normal lately.
The thing that is weird about this though is even though I had teased her about not calling me much, I knew something was up with my elderly aunt (her sister) and it was weighing on my mother. Normally when we talk it’s in the evening. I’ll call her after dinner, but I was taking my break for lunch and thought I should just give her a call now. We very rarely talk during the day, but the thought came to me and before I could walk over to pick up my cell phone, the phone rang and it was my mother.
