Constant

For almost ten months now I have been visiting your grave. This has just become a part of my routine. Yet I go there each time expecting to somehow feel different, have a different experience. I never do. Being there is always the same. You are still dead and I am still overwhelmed with devastation. Sometimes I cry longer and louder than other days, but really nothing ever changes.

This morning I went to your grave and the grass and flowers growing were just so upsetting to me. Your grave looked like a little lost field in the center of the world. I snapped. I got down on my hands and knees and started pulling everything out. I was crying so hard and tearing at the weeds like a mad woman. I couldn’t help it. I was overcome with sorrow and sadness and lack of control – I just pulled and pulled until there was nothing left to grab at. I realize I can probably pay someone to keep your grave looking neat. But I am not ready to sign over the responsibility of your life. I am not ready to stop taking care of you – in whatever form it takes.

I stepped away from your grave, wiped away the tears and admired my work. Just a fresh layer of grass lay on top and it looked nice. Thinking your grave looked nice sent me into another wave of sobbing until I just lay down on the grass pounding my fists into the earth. I was screaming for you and wanted to know if you could hear me and feel my pain. Then I started to think about all the ants swarming around and I got freaked out and stood up, brushed myself off and calmed down.

I don’t know what set off this hysterical rage within me. Maybe the house, maybe the birthday party – maybe nothing. I realized today that so much has changed for me since last October. I couldn’t even begin to list everything. Oddly the one constant- the one thing in all this time that has not changed, is right here in the cemetery. You are and always will be dead and buried. I can look at the grave and think about how much time has passed. I can think about how every season there are subtle changes to the cemetery, but not much else goes on there. Maybe that is why I am so drawn to going back, even though it makes me so very sad. It has been the one constant thing in my life. I can depend on you being there when I get there. I know I will be all alone with my thoughts. I am comforted in some bizarre way that there is one place on the planet I know hasn’t changed.

Tomorrow is therapy again. I look forward to it and dread it every month. I look forward to being around people who understand my story and pain. A place where I don’t have to act any different or worry about my tears. I dread going because I always worry a new person will have joined the group. It sounds totally selfish, as of course I was once the newbie. It is hard enough listening to the regulars talk and hear about their daily struggles. When a new person joins it is really awful to listen to. Their pain is so raw and so new and the hurt and confusion and madness they speak of feels like my own. I relive your death in my head as if it were day one all over again. I almost have to stomp on my foot to bring me back to my present life instead of getting sucked up into theirs. Therapy is really hard and really helpful all bundled up into one.

Thursday I am taking the children to meet with a therapist who runs a family bereavement group. The ten week program starts in September and she wants to meet with us before the counseling begins.

I feel sick to my stomach about having to bring them to therapy. I should be taking them to girl scouts or soccer or really anywhere else but to a place to talk about their dead daddy. It just makes me so angry at their father to have to do this. I know that they will not view it like I do. They will have pizza and do art projects and make new friends.

But I know what happens in therapy. This to me will just be a place where we have to open the wounds and tell our sad story, and of course listen to other's devastating tales. Another constant.