Surfacing

A swimming pool is a great place to cry in.




Even with five regulation-sized lanes and a leisure pool, I am confident that my tears made the waters rise higher tonight.  Michael's mother, Marti, died unexpectedly last Wednesday.  Tonight as I went for my swim, I looked up at the ceiling during my backstroke, cried, and cried.  Then fell into the trance of the swim:  Reach. Reach. Reach. Reach. 




I have worked with death for years.  I have been a hospice nurse for ten years, grew up as a pastor's kid, and have faced serious health issues.  We are no strangers to stress, to pain, to the intensity of grief.  I know what it looks like, and feels like, and what to expect in all of its unpredictability.  When I have a patient that dies, I grieve too...but it's not entirely my grief to have.


This time, though, it is. It is my turn to lose.  This week I have been following the tide of grief, the ebb and flow of thoughts, energy, feelings, realizations, reflections.  How can she be gone. I can't stop hearing her voice. I'm exhausted. I can't sleep.  What are we going to do for Thanksgiving?  I never got back to her on what Charlie wants for Christmas.  I'm so sad. I'm so sad. I'm so sad.  Reach. Reach. Reach.  Did this really happen? I can see her sitting, right there...and right there...the boys just lost their Grandma.  Michael's mother has died, his mother.. Reach. Reach. Reach.  My breath steadied with my strokes, putting me in a kind of meditation, until I started crying again and began to sink into the water, just a little; but I always resurfaced.