How it is that grief troops on, in heavy boots through untrodden, mucky paths with no clear endpoint? Ah, the battle metaphor emerges. My brain is giving me a break from the tangled string imagery. This army of Emily mourners are all on the same side, but none of us have any idea where we’re going, what we’ll be called to do, and if we’ll make it through.

Clearly, I don’t want to be battling, but each time there is a little respite for me, I find I need to ‘be there’ for someone, or plan or make decisions I don’t want to make or wonder about and try to figure out our futures. All of it is stressful.

For someone spontaneous such as me, with a can-do-get-er-done attitude, this is not a comfortable arena to be in: feeling suddenly disabled to do the things I once did with ease, to be running on DMV-sloth speed; instead of cruising into the evening, I’m tiptoeing into it, having little idea how we will get through the several more hours before bedtime and dreading the elusive sleep.

If it sounds like hell, it kind of is. But with intermissions. I am still laughing. I am still reading and writing. I am still speaking with friends. I am still holding my beloved. Hell, I’ve even cooked a thing or two. But not much. Don is mostly cooking while I sit at the table and heart messages that beautiful friends around the world have sent to us and that Don is not even ready to read yet, no less respond to. We are on the same side, but our paths through grief intersect and diverge, intersect and diverge.

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I wrote the above paragraphs yesterday, having no volition to continue. Instead, we applied for flight refunds, requiring patience, the telling and retelling of our ‘story,’ and enduring a woman letting us know in shrill tones that we were entitled to a medical alarm system necklace after which I replied, “I have a dead daughter. I don’t want your damn necklace. I want a refund for the flight tickets.” Her retort? “But ma’am, somebody else in your family could fall ill!” That’s when I hung up. 

And that’s when I was essentially done for the day: I foraged for food, read, watched part of a Kardashians episode, and when Don picked up Charlotte from her residence to come home, there was finally joy and snuggling and knitting in our matching pajamas that Kristi had so sweetly gifted us.

This morning the so-called battle zone is quiet. I am feeling that numbness people describe. My brother and sis-in-law are driving all the way from Kamloops and picking up my Daddy along the way so there will be visiting and there will be grieving. I have those mixed emotions of wanting to see these deeply-loved folks, but not wanting to go THERE.

I expect this is how it will be for some time. It is what it is.