Finding My Way Home through Grief
Three Facts: 1. He died. 2. Since then, I have done all the “right” things. 3. Still, I feel fragile
Nine months ago, my love died – he was old, but not expected to die, which made it both shocking and shattering. I had no blueprint for how to hold both things at once: the deep sorrow of losing him, and the joy of having known this fine man.
In response to this paradox, I did everything right. Or so I thought.
I felt the pain, hugged my pillow in the night, demanded to know why he wasn’t walking in the door. I leaned on countless friends and family. I rested. I stomped my feet and yelled in the woods, felt abandoned and wronged and furious at his dying.
I stitched my grief and let out my sorrow through my handwork. I resisted the pull toward productivity and over-functioning.
I created rituals to let him go – rituals of acceptance, of stepping through the threshold into the new. Breathing rituals. Practices of self-care. I let myself be held by the Earth. I did my ceremonies to send his soul into the care of the holies – those spirits that tend the soul after death.
I spent time outdoors. I felt comforted when I found him in the rocks, the hawks, the lotuses, and the wide openness of the Flint Hills.
I remembered with sweetness his mischievous sideways glances, his jokes, his caring ways. I listened to his many friends tell hilarious, moving, and raunchy stories about him.
I sought help from my astrologer, my guide, books, music, dead poets, rom-coms, and way too many sweet desserts.
I grappled with missing him too much, or not enough — with feeling like I was letting him go too quickly or holding on too tightly. I simultaneously trusted our love completely and doubted it utterly.
Like someone who quits smoking and must dismantle all their old rituals, I dismantled the love rituals we had built together. I rearranged the furniture in my home and my studio, clearing out the old and making space for the new. I moved the chair where he always sat so I wouldn’t look for him every time I passed by.
I set boundaries with people who wanted to use me to process their own grief, and I chose carefully with whom I would share the secrets of him.
And yet, doing all the right things hasn’t saved me from still feeling fragile, lost, and distant from the heart of myself.
Grief, I’ve discovered, is a journey — not one I chose, but one I’m on. I’ve set my Soul GPS to take me home to myself, but the road runs through a landscape I don’t recognize and don’t know how to navigate. All my mental maps have changed. I simply don’t know where I am.
On this grief trip home to myself, I eat lunch in the shade of cemeteries, get lost in swamps of sadness, and pass through dead and dying towns. I have no idea what’s over the next hill. The countryside I’m traveling through is sometimes magically alive and beautiful — and sometimes a barren wasteland.
On this soul trip, I make plans for where I’ll spend the night, but I never quite arrive. I find myself parked on an incline on an abandoned road, or in a country church parking lot, recline my seat, and sleep there — clueless about where I actually am. The stars, the howling coyotes, the hooting owls calm me. But that calm is not bone-deep.
Heading home to myself, I grab at this plan or that new idea, hoping I might find myself there. But I can’t quite sustain the momentum, and each one falls away.
I now suspect that this meandering path back home may take longer than I anticipated – and it’s more unknown than I am comfortable with. Despite my best plans and hopes, and despite my pride in doing everything right, I am not in charge of the timeline.
And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe grief isn’t a problem to be solved or a road to be navigated. Maybe it’s more like weather – something that moves through you whether you’re ready or not – hot one day, cold and rainy the next — and sometimes a big storm moves through. And then, eventually, it shifts. Not because you did anything right. Just because that’s what weather does.
Here is what I know: the GPS is still on, set to take me home to myself. The destination hasn’t changed. And every mile I’ve traveled – every cemetery lunch, every swamp, every night parked lost under the stars – has been part of the route, not a detour from it.
My plan is to resist trying to find the road home and trust that home is finding me. To stop moving through grief and let it move through me. I’ll let myself be right here – lost and tender – until one day I wake up and I can see, at last, where I am.
