Our bathroom has a Jack and Jill vanity which is the stupidest name for two sinks in a master bath … because Jack and Jill were siblings and how many siblings share a master bath?! You could just as easily call them Snow White and Rose Red sinks or Drusilla and Anastasia sinks …. or Jacob and Ludwig sinks (probably not Gaston and LeFou since they’re besties rather than siblings).

Anyway, now that the floors are dry and curing we can walk on them (no furniture until Saturday though), and I’m back to packing and cleaning out. I *thought* that I had finished going through Ken’s side of the vanity last year but opening the cabinet door last night was all the proof I needed that, in fact, apparently all I did last year was move stuff around (and probably cry). It’s a good argument against trying to go through things before you’re ready since you’ll just have to do it again later.

The number of things we’ve done *without* Ken is long enough now that we can no longer keep track and that’s probably good for my sanity at least. Everything we do from now on will be a thing we’ve done *without* Ken so keeping track is just another emotional Lego to step on during a middle-of-the-night walk to the bathroom.

Most weeks at our Caring Place meeting, the adults talk about the high point and the low point of the week. We have a lot in common — our low points usually involve a combination of significant events like birthdays and anniversaries and the expectations of others. Don’t get me wrong. Those “others” are our friends and families and colleagues and we are all so grateful to them. However, we’re also realizing deeply that EACH of us mourns in a completely private and inexplicable way. Even within our group, we are each unique in our mourning. How can we explain to others when we don’t, ourselves, understand what sends us down the grief spiral? And how can we help our children when they too experience grief in their own way?

Grief in two Acts:

Last night at The Caring Place, we had a big parent meeting about the grief spiral and what behaviors we can expect from our children. There was a LOT of crying. I’m tired of sandpaper eyes, a heavy weight on my chest, tears pooling and overflowing in rivulets on my cheeks.

Today, as I sit, working, on my back porch — the sky is iron grey and the air is heavy with the promise of rain — for just a moment, again, my brain wondered what time Ken would be home.

The End.

Those of you who have lost several loved ones — I have a question for you. Do you find yourselves thinking even more frequently about all of those loved ones? I feel a little bit like Harry Potter holding the resurrection stone and looking at all the people he cared about who had died and just feeling so overwhelmed by grief.

Yesterday was A BAD DAY. I don’t have a lot of hope for today either to be perfectly honest. Ian and I will be back at The Caring Place tonight. I think he’s looking forward to it which is a great relief but I am dreading sitting in the room with all those other widowed spouses, looking at all the faces of grief reflecting back at me like a mirror.

I have an open writing position at work that I am struggling to fill. Reviewing resumes and writing samples is just another way for me to miss Ken. We used to talk through candidates and their writing. One of the candidates I reviewed yesterday has a website with writing samples and they are littered with spelling and grammatical errors. Mistakes happen (as I can attest to every time I look at this blog!) but if, as a writer, you aren’t taking care on your resume/writing samples, I think it unlikely that you’ll be more quality focused on the job! Ken hated poor writing and when he was teaching writing skills to non-writers, he collected and shared examples to explain why writing skills are important. I thought about that yesterday when Ian mentioned to me (while I was loudly venting about the poor quality of my candidate pool) that his friends don’t care about spelling and grammar because the computer does all that for them. Right.

School is almost over for the year. Ian is looking forward to day camp again. This is the last year he’ll be able to walk across the street to get there and we’re both feeling pretty sad about that. Yesterday was A BAD DAY for Ian too. The physical labor of leaving our house is exhausting and the process of cleaning out all the mysterious stuff that belonged to Ken is a combination of frustrating and sad and not at all cathartic, despite what all the grief counselors say. I can honestly say that I’m not finding anything cathartic about yesterday’s ugly crying (yes, literal sobbing while I moved furniture and boxes and stuff) and neither is Ian. Yesterday is the first time in months that I saw Ian crying, while we sat outside in the early dusk, watching for bats and eating our dinner. Usually he is very private in his grief but everything is just too much for us right now.

He said that he doesn’t understand why life has to be so painful. I tried to explain that the gift of Ken in our lives is worth all of the pain we’re experiencing but I am wondering the same thing too.