the questions grief creates

I had driven this way before when our son, Matt, was alive.

He had brought me here because he thought it was beautiful country and hoped to make it his new home.  He so tired of living in the city and loved the hills surrounded by acres of natural beauty.  So as I drove through these country roads, my mind and heart were full of Matt’s dreams.

I could see his excited face and remember sharing the possibilities that his new life chapter held.  Along with those memories then came the familiar dreaded spin into the “what if” spiral that I knew so well.  Why did this happen to him . . . to us?  Why this unbearable loss?  What if he had been able to get here and find a house?  Would that have made the difference? 

Would his hope have rekindled?  Would he have felt his lifeblood come surging back like it was then?  What if? What if? What if?

I hated this cycle and had fallen into it countless times.  It made me tired, sick with longing, and tangled again in these persistent questions with no answers. 

Then, without knowing why, a different question came to me.  Why can’t I just look at this scenery and love it because Matt loved it?   I can do that with other things.  Why not this?  Why can’t I let it make me happy to be in a place that made him happy?”  And no sooner had I imagined having this new perspective . . . than it happened.  I felt immediately like I could make that shift.  And I did. 

A wise friend told me that imagining it opened the door to allow it to happen.

I simply allowed myself to imagine a new way of being, a new way of seeing.

I reframed this experience and turned the corner to healing this one part of the hurt I had inside.

Little by little we can heal.  It takes a desire to change the old way of being and a willingness to risk trying.  I needed to make a shift in how I saw my world. I needed to risk taking the emotional reaction so familiar and so justified and exchanging it for a new one.  It didn’t make my loss go away.  It didn’t require me to forget.  But it created a different memory for me – a grateful moment in the place of a painful longing.