It’s the second Christmas Eve without my grandma and how much I miss her seems to have grown exponentially alongside the joy and festivities of the holidays. Today my grief feels like I’m carrying a thirty ton bowling ball around my neck.
It is often preached that as time goes on, your grief lessens. That’s a crock of shit. Your grief takes naps. Your grief misses its exit and is delayed. Your grief calls in sick but always shows up for the next shift. Grief doesn’t shrink. It hides and waits for you to feel unchecked joy. It waits until you feel like you can go on then it grips you by your throat and chokes you till you black out. Then you wake up, tender and unmoored, and deeply sad.
I don’t see my grief getting smaller. I see it as a constant companion that can be safely ignored when necessary. But today I wasn’t able to ignore it and so I wrote about it. I gave it the attention it wanted. Now I’m going to go to the movies with my husband and think about how my grandma would have wanted me to.