1,461 Days

As I have written about grieving the loss of Amy, a theme has emerged. It is of the struggle to find balance. It is the tug between darkness and light – fog and clarity; the conflict between focusing on the past, the present, or the future; and the challenge of holding conflicting emotions in the same space. 

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In many ways, it seems like it was only yesterday that Amy died. The memory of that 5:30 a.m. phone call often elbows its way into my consciousness. It is particularly vivid when I’m on my front porch on cool, fall mornings as the stars give way to a rising sun. But, as intense and familiar as those memories can be, it wasn’t yesterday – it was 1,461 days ago - four years.  The question that always accompanies those memories is the one I felt in that moment – now what?

 

Much has been written about the stages of grief. Writers offer that grief is a process or a journey or a path or one of countless metaphors we use to try to make sense of something that defies comprehension. I have also used and overused those metaphors to help myself understand the discordant and chaotic nature of the grief process. Some of those descriptions come close, but all fall short of capturing my experience.

I could hardly move beyond the emptiness during those first months and years. I recently read a piece in which someone made the distinction between being lonely and being alone. Their description of being alone involved choice and emotional agency. That isn’t the case in death.  My grief has been a synonymous entanglement of loneliness and being alone. Both of those can occur in crowded spaces filled with friends and family. I’m still bushwhacked by those emotions that appear with a breathtaking intensity.  Yet, as jarring as they can be, I’m discovering that they seem to come less often. 

Hindsight offers a glimpse of how grief continues to amplify my emotional responses. A poignant song can activate a flood of tears. I seem more attuned to other people’s emotional states and find myself absorbing their feelings. Amy’s death opened a portal that allows me to feel and live life at a much deeper level.

These days, I find myself grieving less about what was lost and focusing more on what could have been. I envision Amy as a doting grandmother. I can close my eyes and see her on the top bleacher of a gym or stadium, recording Liam’s basketball and football games. I can almost hear her voice on those videos, shouting encouragement and arguing calls made by the referees. I know how much she would enjoy helping plan a wedding or a shower with her family. I find myself thinking of the trips we dreamed of but that never took place. 

“Life goes on.” It is an overused cliche that has brought me no comfort over the past years. Yet, there is truth in that statement. There were days and months after Amy’s death when her memory consumed me. Now, I catch myself looking past her photographs. A pang of immense, indescribable guilt always follows those oversights. I don’t cry as often at the cemetery when I place new flowers on her headstone. Oddly, the harder I try to cling to those old emotions, the faster they seem to melt away.  New friends have entered my life, and our family continually reshapes itself through births and marriages with people who never knew Amy.  And someday, the “what could have beens” will fade further into the background. Those are the realities I grieve today.

Because of those emerging realities, I’ve spent much of the past months pondering how to measure whether a life matters. Scripture offers that “… you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14 ESV). Given that we are simply a blip on the continuum of eternity, what lasting impact can we possibly have on the world around us?  

Amy showed me how it’s done.  When she cuddled a baby in the church nursery, it was a tactile way of communicating to that child that this is a place where you will be nourished and loved unconditionally long after I’m gone. Her daily check-ins with her sisters reinforced the reality that regardless of circumstances, they were a family that sticks together. Amy’s quilting was a tangible demonstration of how she viewed relationships and life – a plethora of incongruent patterns and colors that can be stitched together with intention to make something with lasting beauty.

It warms my heart when someone says, “I was just thinking about Amy.”  It reminds me that Amy’s life had impact. The ripples of her existence and the relationships she sustained will outlive her memory. My world went dark the day she died. But now I more fully recognize that pieces of Amy continue to be reflected in her family and friends.  Those pieces live on in me.  Nowadays, instead of darkness, I recognize that the world, my world, is brighter because Amy was, and continues to be, a part of it.

I miss her…