Another day. Today I took another load home from Mom’s apartment. Relatively non-emotional things, like household cleaner and a garbage can. Finding a home for each new thing in our house often proves too much for me, however, and the bags line our hallway until I or someone else in our family has the energy to put things away.

It’s chaotic. It’s different. Those who said me moving back home now that Mom has died would be a returning to normal couldn’t have been farther from reality. It’s not normal. Nothing is normal. Our old life is in the past, and things have changed. We’re still caught in the ripple effects of Mom’s death, like a pebble being churned up by the incoming waves of the ocean over and over and over. None of us have settled. Every rhythm we had is gone, and life is too unpredictable to create many new rhythms yet.

It breaks my heart that I cannot be who I want to be. Last night, my daughter was perky and bright-eyed, eager to talk to me about what was going on in her world. I, however, was spent. Grief sucks the energy from you better than a full family of four children. I had lost all capacity to listen or be present with her, and I had to look her in the eye and say, “Honey, I’m so sorry, I want to listen to you, but I can’t. I don’t have anything left. I need some down time where I’m not doing anything.” And she nodded, didn’t appear to be hurt, and went downstairs. My spirit wanted to listen to her, and my flesh was weak and couldn’t. I’m more limited than I was before Mom was sick. My sweet kids run into these limits every day, and it breaks my heart afresh each time I can’t be the mom I want to be.

I don’t know how to answer, “How are you?”. There are no good responses that are both honest and respectful to the unwitting person who just stepped on the landmine of my broken heart, or the well-intentioned individual who doesn’t know what to do with a grieving person. It’s a terrible place to be put, actually. I don’t want to be asked how I am, and I do. I don’t want to be around people, and I do. Another example of not knowing which end is up. Like C.S. Lewis said in A Grief Observed, if only I could be around people and have them not talk to me. I dread being alone, as the feelings soar in to be my constant companion, yet I don’t have the energy to engage in conversation. Sometimes I can barely finish a sentence, and often the words get jumbled. Part of the brain fog of grief.

The weight of grief is real. It sucks the life out of you. I rarely have the energy to move. I do things because I know they are good for me, but even then, I have limits. Yet if people look at me from the outside, I seem fine. If only grief could be observed outwardly. If I wore a cast and limped, people would obviously understand my limits and I wouldn’t be faced with explaining why I can’t do such-and-such a thing, or refraining from explaining, and living with that weight of not being understood. If they could look inside me, they would see the carnage and perhaps leave me be. My body feels like it’s betrayed my mind. They are interconnected, yet out of sync with each other. Not to mention my soul. I can’t tell which end is up.

At times I am enjoying my beautiful family. Then while I’m doing so, out of the blue with no warning comes a feeling of complete disconnect from them. They are laughing at something beautiful or funny, and in that onrush of disconnect, I feel as if I cannot relate to them at all. My heart is reminded that it is broken, and that life is dangerous. Life hurts, and these beautiful moments can turn to ugly and painful ones at the drop of a hat. No warning, no asking you for permission. At times, if I dwell on it, the fact that beautiful can turn to ugly on a dime scares me deeply. I shrink from living, and yet I don’t want to shrink. I know it’s better to love than not to love, but the other side of love is loss and terrible pain. No one can love without also experiencing the loss of someone you love deeply. And part of me still wants to avoid that type of wrenching. Of separation.

I never really related with Christians who said the worst part of Jesus’ time on the cross (and beforehand as well) was his separation from his father. The bloody torture and slow suffocation seemed worse to me. Then all of a sudden, driving home from another tap class today, when Mom wasn’t there, and I couldn’t talk with her in the parking lot like we usually would, it hit me. This separation from Mom because of her death is the most painful thing I have experienced in my life thus far. It hurts more than I ever believed possible. There are days I don’t feel like I can go on, and days I don’t want to. Death isn’t natural. Death isn’t God’s good design. Death is ripping, searing pain. It’s separating you from someone you love, and this side of heaven, there is no cure. There is no removal of that sting. It’s very much present. And anyone who has not yet had a loved one ripped from their lives does not understand this yet. But they will.

I digress. As I realized this separation from Mom hurts so much because I love her, I also realized that Jesus knows how I feel. Experientially. He lost his father. He was separated from God. He knows not just the separation of a child from a parent, but the ripping, searing pain of losing God. He cried out in the midst of it, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” from Psalm 22. He knows. That does not make my pain any less. That does not make this grief ease. That does not make me smile and say, like so many Christians seem to think I need to say, “It’s all right. God is good.” It frees me to cry out in my anguish to God, too. It frees me to grieve. It brings my heart awe that I am not alone. That Jesus would be willing to suffer a greater pain than I’ll ever know.

I can’t fathom things being more painful than they are now, except when I consider losing my husband or kids. Now I live in the understanding that such a dreaded event could actually happen. The blinders that I deserve a long marriage, that I deserve to watch my kids grow up, that I should be able to see grandchildren, that I am somehow “due” these things just because I am alive, are gone. That’s all been stripped away. No where did God promise any of those things. No where did he say I am due these things. I have fooled myself in believing that I do. I have listened to other voices besides his. I am not promised a horror-free life. I am promised a painful one. With Jesus with me through all of it. Each valley, each mountaintop. At least I never have to lose God’s presence. It is a remarkable thing that we know his presence most closely in the darkest of times.

It’s scary to be this honest. I feel like I’m going crazy, and if I were to share, that others would confirm my loss of sanity. Listening to C.S. Lewis today helped me realize that this is not insanity, but deep grief. And when we put words to it, it helps others know they are not alone. Today I felt a deep connection to someone who died when my mom was three years old. We have never met, yet his honesty through his journey of losing his wife to cancer has already deeply helped me. Go figure. I wonder if either of us would trade the lessons learned and the help given for our loved one back. I don’t know. One of the many questions without answers that have been coming to mind.