Last week I was video chatting with my bestie, Claire, commiserating and compassionating (new word I’ve just coined). Not surprisingly, we two English teachers, with a penchant for analogies, came up with the metaphor of having more pepper and less salt as the rambling path of grief progresses.
The constant thudding of grief is slowly abating, but it still takes my breath away several times each day as I return to the empirical fact that my Emily, as I knew her, is gone.
My dreams have always been vivid and stay with me for hours, sometimes days afterward; this is both a gift, but mostly a curse, that I inherited from my mother who would regale us with her dream life each morning as we ate our detested porridge, smothered with brown sugar. My beloved Mama, fortunately, was blessed with happier dreams than mine tend to be.
Understandably, my day life has mostly been preferred to my night life throughout the history of me. Last week, I had a dream paralysis situation that felt like it lasted for hours, so full of horror that it was still deeply embedded in my amygdala several hours later. I used to be relieved to wake up, but in these past weeks, not so much.
I recount this a week or so later because I am no longer waking up from a nightmare and finding myself in a ‘daymare’ (another Leah word!): rather, I wake up knowing Emily is with me in spirit, my head resting on her soft blanket that is wrapped around my pillow. I greet her, always with something akin to, “Good morning, Emily. Please be with me. Help me find some joy today. Protect us all today and give us peace. And if you wish to show yourself to me in some way, I am open.”
Yes, there is still much salt, but I want to start seasoning with a lighter hand, peppering my days with memories of my Emily, never shying away from them, but also living in the present moment, moving forward, and creating a hopeful future. With Emily in it.