The Changing Seasons of Grief
How we are taking time to continue how to learn how to live with loss of Lucy
I have had two different versions of this week’s post form this morning as I sat down to write. I began writing a preamble excusing myself for being so brief this week because we will be taking time away as a family to address that the season’s have once again changed, which means we are now entering our second earthly season of life without Lucy in it. That preamble started turning into something meaningful, so I’m going to chase it and let that happen.
Before jumping into today’s topic I’m going to give you all a bit of a behind the scenes look into the process as well as touch base on where our family is in our healing journey. I have said this before, but this project of Chapter 3 Stigma is something that I am referring to as “selective selfishness” for me. It has been incredibly healing for myself both in continuing to live a life focused on active recovery as well as learning how to live with the loss of Lucy.
Today’s post is relatively short, as soon as I can finish this rambling preamble! I’m finding that the podcast and newsletter writing are different forms for me to capture and organize my own thoughts floating around in my head. I love both forms equally. It is becoming very apparent that while I am capable of producing and scheduling podcasts weeks or months into the future, with the newsletter I have kept that production at a week-by-week cadence to this point. So a shortened week means less time to write.
The reason this week’s newsletter is short is that my wife and I are taking our seasonal pause and time away to disconnect and check-in on how we are doing since losing Lucy in December. One of our care team members told us that the changing of the seasons during the first year is going to catch us off guard and bring the grief and loss back upon us. They recommended that we should be deliberate about taking time to ourselves at a moment that feels right to us during a seasonal change to address this.
I cannot express how right this care team member was with their advice. The changing of the seasons makes it so apparent that the world continues to turn and move forward, and it feels uncaring and cold to someone suffering that the world doesn’t just stop and give you the time you need. There’s this difficult scenario you find yourself in after going through a loss where you know you need to move forward, but you might not be ready or you feel that by moving forward you’re not honoring the one you lost.
It’s a difficult and complicated place to be in right now, especially dealing with the loss of a child. We are finding that our minds always run the math to figure out what season of life and development you would be in with your little one at this moment. I think by this point we could have cracked a smile on Lucy’s face or heard a giggle. Grant is showing incredible expressions of care to his toys - putting them to nap, changing their diapers, reading to them - it’s impossible for our minds not to long for him doing that with his little sister instead of his play things.
But that isn’t part of our plan. While we accept that, it doesn’t make the sting of loss hurt any less. It allows us to bear it without it completely collapsing the structure of our family and our individual lives but there’s still a lot of hurt and grief that exists.
So we’re taking a pause this week to reflect and to check-in. We’ll have an opportunity to be with and around people that have played an incredibly important role in our journey over the last year, whether they explicitly realize it or not. We will be in a physically beautiful place void of distraction. We’ll talk about Lucy. We’ll express our selfish desires, discuss what has been difficult for us to bear over these past months and continue to focus on our healing.
Most importantly, we will be with each other.
That’s all I’ve got.
Kyle