Counselors tell the bereaved that grief will change them.
They readily acknowledge that life after loss will never be the same as it was before death entered our world. But they encourage us that there will be a “new normal”–different, yes, but some kind of settled pattern that we can count on.
I’m not sure when this is supposed to happen.
Every day I feel out out of balance, off-kilter and have to scramble to catch up to the clock ticking off the hours. I can’t find the pattern, the beat…
Grief sways to a rhythm of its own.
Hard to follow, impossible to second guess.
I step on my own toes trying to keep up and find that often I fall flat on my face.
When Dominic applied to the University of Alabama Law School, he had to submit a personal statement. The idea was to give the selection committee insight into intangibles that might make a prospective student a good candidate for the program.
Dominic wrote about being a drummer.
He made the case that percussion is the heartbeat of music. It marks the pace, leads the way. If a drummer misses a beat, it can throw the whole band into confusion.
My life as a bereaved mother feels like music that can’t find its way.
There is melody and harmony and sometimes sweet singing–but I can’t discern a rhythm and I don’t know where it’s going. Discord clangs loudly in the background.
These years were supposed to be the ones where I swayed instinctively in well-worn paths to familiar tunes.
Not ones in which I had to learn a brand new step to a song I don’t even like.
I don’t have the option to request a different tune, so I do my best to keep moving to this broken beat.
thelifeididntchoose 