Just Keep Swimming

What is the fine line between depression and grief? Is there one? Do you just crumble on the couch and not want to take part in world from laziness or are you so detached because nothing soothes that part of you that is missing? You go for so long with only a few hours of sleep at night because your mind can’t turn off the dreams. You smile and laugh with the people around you but don’t feel the emotions that go with it. No one truly understands the loss you are feeling and you can barely verbalize it. When you try to speak the words you are over come by emotions and just end up crying. The crying turns to anger because you can’t say what you need to get out. The anger turns to frustration because there is no where to release it (how do you physically attack the disease that took Natalia). The frustration grows until you just want to hit out at anyone or anything but keep pulling it back inside because you don’t want to hurt anyone else…pulling you further away from the world of the normal. These feeling may last a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years. Simply put, you feel lost.

What a way to start to the blog…I recently found, or should I say came back to, the world of online grief support groups. I discovered…that my grief is “sane”. Wow, sanity, what an amazing concept. I just thought I was beginning to lose what is left of my mind…coming up on the big 40 is causing parts of my mind to go. LOL!!! Back to online grief support, I recently found Compassionate Friends on Facebook. The last experience I had with a grief support group put me off…too much pain and anger in one place for me to handle well. While elements of that do exist at CF, how can it not when you lose a loved one, the majority of people are just like our family. They have learned the miracle of the moment. The pain exists but they are not willing to let it overshadow joy that our loved one brought into our lives. It feels good to throw out emotional moments and have feed back from someone else that “gets it”(getting mail for Natalia is one instance. Yep, stuff will still come.).

I fall into the minutes and days category. I feel the waves of grief everyday but only allow them to overcome me for a few “minutes” a day. The “days” part is when I get knocked sideways by a wave and just can’t seem to recover for a few days. I don’t think of grief as a rollercoaster or a crazy train like other people have described. For me grief is like the ocean and I have gotten to be a pretty good swimmer. There are beautiful, peaceful coves that can hide dangerous riptides. This is when everything is going really good and I begin to think that I’m stronger and ready to face anything only to get hit in the face by opening an envelope containing Natalia’s death certificate. There are untold dark depths that hide amazing underwater life. This is when I am ready to give up swimming and sink beneath the surface then Sophia will sing and dance her way through one of her amazing “I love you Mama!” creations. I have learned that some days are easier then others. When the grief overwhelms me, I look around and see the true magnificence and beauty that the world has to offer and I know Talia is looking down on us and saying “it’s all going to be ok.” In Dory’s immortal words “Just Keep Swimming, just keepswimming!”

A lot of overwhelming feelings have popped up over the past two months. Sophia is starting to have so many “1st’s” that Natalia never got to experience. So I get double smacked with them. Here’s the one example that had me balling up a storm in the car…watching Sophia walk away from me to school all by herself. She decided she was old enough and did not need me to walk her to her classroom door. Twofold…my BABY was growing up, getting more independent and ready for more responsibility (enough to drive any parent to tears)…Natalia got sick just before she hit this stage…in fact she got sick almost exactly 2 years to the date when Sophia decided to declare her independence. Oh yeah, cryfest! Just driving by Weldon the last couple of months has been enough to send me into tears. It’s that time of year, the time when Natalia was first diagnosed with the brain tumor, so the memories are coming fast and furious. She was so happy in kindergarten and every time I drive by I see her laughing and playing tag on the playground. They are happy memories but they make me miss her all the more. These memories hit last year, as well, but I was so numb from just losing her that they didn’t send me into a tailspin. They were more of a comfort last year. I know they will be comfort again but Sophia’s jumps into independence give grief that small opening it needs to overwhelm.

I am probably not making sense to you. There are times when I don’t even make sense to myself. But I just needed to write it down and get the feelings out. Then, hopefully, they won’t affect me so much.

Much Love,
Roni