Moribund

I am not completely ready to absorb the words of Elisabeth Elliot, author of the book Lonliness. However, she seems to indicate that, at least initially, she had the same feelings. When talking about the longterm "joy" that people have found through overcoming hardship and grief, she writes:

I wonder if, for a moment or two, [this man] might have felt as I sometimes do: I will not relinquish this misery, not right now. God has taken away what I most wanted. I have a right to feel sorry for myself. I have been wronged. I will refuse, for a while at least, any offer of comfort and healing. Don't speak to me of joy. You pour salt in my wounds. Let me lick them for a while.

I feel that way much of the time, like my grief is a blanket that covers me and I will not give it up for anything. Sometimes I fear that I will never allow myself to be truly happy again. I do believe that life can be good, albeit in an entirely different way than before I lost Kevin. Today was a case in point. I went out to the Oakbrook mall with Gloria and my mother-in-law to order Gloria's toddler bed from Pottery Barn kids. The air was relatively warm (a kind of brisk pre-Spring), the air was still and the sun was shining brightly. We talked about the depth of our grief in small snipets between long laughs about our mundane lives.

It is interesting to me the way that grief will take me right to the verge of losing it, and then something will snap me back into life. Today, we were discussing how Kevin must have been in a lot more pain then we were aware of, and how we wished that someone had been able to help him overcome that pain without drugs. I thought, "I can't take this sadness. I can't believe that this has happened." In the background music of the car I heard a funny noise and reached to turn the volume up slightly. It was the B-52's "Rock Lobster," one of Kevin's favorites. I could see him grinning and snapping his fingers together in the form of a lobster claw, completely pleased with himself for making me smile. Linda and I both sat and listened in a happy fog of Kevin memories.

Linda also explained to me that she realized how many things she had done just to "impress" Kevin. She had loved the way that he would say, "Mom, why did you buy the new Justin Timberlake album?!?! You are too old for that!" Even though he teased her, he thought she was a pretty cool mom for making the effort to stay "young at heart." Sometimes she can make me crazy, but I really do understand what her need was to have Kevin tease her that way. I like to think about the way he would react to things now, being chagrined at his mom's obsession with the details of Gloria's wardrobe. I like to think that he would be proud of me too, although I never doubted that he thought the world of me.