My Three-Year Journey through Grief
and Something Resembling Acceptance
Getting Lost. And Unlost.
“You
will be lost. And unlost. Over and over again.
Relax love. You were meant to be this glorious epic story.”
Nayirrah Waheed
Relax love. You were meant to be this glorious epic story.”
Nayirrah Waheed
Three years ago, I lost the love of
my life. And I lost me. It was the start of a lifechanging journey. I had no
choice in how it all began, but I did find a choice in which path to take.
Year One. Barely
Existing & Finding My Tribe.
“Losing
you was traumatic, terrible… but living without you is so much worse. I just
want it to end. I’m so tired.” Journal entry year one.
May 16th 2015 is the day
everything came to a sudden halt, the day everything began. That first year I
floated between two worlds. There was nothing in the world of the living for
me. All I wanted was Kerry, but I didn’t know where to find him. It felt like
being stuck between two walls. Refusing to go back to reality, desperately
trying to knock down the wall to wherever Kerry was. I was overwhelmed by an
unwillingness to exist and intense, heart aching sadness. I didn’t know how to
be without Kerry. I woke up with palpitations and fell asleep with tears. Every.
Single. Day. I believed my heart was broken beyond repair. In the middle was a
big gaping hole, bleeding with raw grief. Even the most mundane things sent me
off into tears. Grocery shopping was the worst. It felt too normal. And nothing
about this world without Kerry was normal. So I would write to him, every
single day. Even when I didn’t feel like it. Because I desperately wanted to
keep him alive. Letting go was not an option.
There were moments in those early
days, when I felt the tenderness of his love running through my veins.
Literally. I felt the warmth of his body against mine, the touch of his hand
against my face. The sensation was often gone before I even realized it was
there. ‘Come back’, is all I would say. ‘Come back’. I was drowning. My brother
kept me afloat in those early days. And then my mom. It was human connection
that pulled me through that first year, that continues to pull me through.
People often don’t know what to say or do when someone is knocked down to the
ground. It makes us uncomfortable and afraid to reach out to those who are
hurting. Or they ask irrelevant questions, like how long we had been together,
or how he died. The question hardly anyone ever asked was who Kerry was.
That is what I wanted to do more
than anything, share my memories of Kerry with others. I wanted to tell them
about how he used to lift me up in the kitchen and squeeze me so hard it hurt.
I never said a thing because I didn’t want him to let go. Or about our shared
love for lemon poppyseed muffins (only the top part). And about that spot under
his eye that I loved to kiss or his struggle with the pronunciation of
‘facetious’. I wanted people to know about his love for giant amounts of
popcorn and all kinds of beef jerky, and his frustration with unripe tomatoes.
I wanted to tell them about his dedication to getting gum out of the package in
a certain order. And my dedication to messing up his system. I wanted them to
know about his love for trees and our compatibility in garlic chopping: I peeled,
he chopped. I was so worried I would forget all these ordinary extraordinary
moments that I was often stuck in those memories. (Some) people would tell me I
had to move on, find someone new. But to put it in the words of Megan Devine
“Love is. It doesn’t move on. It doesn’t leave you behind.” I learnt that it is
not time that makes things better, but rather the tribe of people around you. I
am forever grateful for the handful of people who were brave enough to stand by
my side, to hold my hand and just let me be however I needed to be.
Year Two. Trying to
Fix Myself.
“I
want to live. Except I don’t know how. I don’t know how to live a life without
you. I don’t know how to live a life with you, this new you that only lives in
my heart. This you that makes me feel loved and alone all at the same time. I
don’t know how to smile with tears in my eyes.” Journal quote, March 19, 2016
On May 1, 2016 I write the
following: ‘I might be in the tsunami, but I’m wearing a life vest, willingly.’
It’s the ‘willingly’ that catches my eye. The shift from year one to year two was
one of finding my voice in the grief journey. When you lose someone, you feel
as if all your choices have been taken from you. Someone else is pulling the
strings. In those initial moments of inundation with feelings, that is all you
see. But slowly you start noticing different paths to take. I decided that I
wanted to live. On the first anniversary of Kerry’s death I promised him I
would find love and happiness again. I promised to not be afraid anymore of
life. I thought I had made it through. Except I hadn’t. The waves kept coming,
at less frequent intervals, but still as intense as in the first year. The only
difference was that when I got hit this time, I would try to fight my way
through. The result was unequivocally the same as during the first year: I
would drown in a sea of heartache. In my mind I was ready, so I tried to force
my heart to follow. Except it wasn’t ready yet.
The push to move on was very much
motivated by everything I heard and saw around me. Everyone else had moved on.
Time heals, right? So I better follow suit. I was desperately trying to grieve
in the right way. People would tell me it’s time to move on. They would wish me
strength, comment on my courage. Few people wished me kindness and softness, or
patience to sit with those feelings of sadness. I used to be one of those
‘fix-me-quick’ people, a problem-solver to the core. It wasn’t until I
encountered a problem with no solution that I learnt that there is no way around
the pain. There is only sitting with it, to carry those feelings with you. I
hated feeling so exposed all the time, so vulnerable. As if I had a label on my
forehead that said ‘BROKEN’ in big bold letters. So I desperately tried to rub
it off. And I avoided people. I stopped being the social butterfly that I once
was. It was just too damn hard.
As much as I wanted to keep my
promise to Kerry, it didn’t feel right to be happy without him. I wanted to
share things with him more than anything. So every time I smiled, every time I
had a fun day, I would be left with this bittersweet taste. Why do I get to
live when he doesn’t? It just all felt wrong. Except I kept trying. Because I
knew that’s what people wanted me to do. Because I knew Kerry wanted me to be
happy. I was listening to all the voices around me, except to my heart. I did
not see how terrified I was with life. I was so terrified that there were lots
of moments when I just wanted everything to end. I would sit at an intersection
and hope someone would run a red light and hit me. Everything just scared me
and the more I pushed, the more painful it got. I had all these questions in
that second year, trying to figure things out. I couldn’t accept there were no
answers.
Year Three. Seeing
the Beauty in the Cracks.
“I
am here. I did not choose to be here without you. But I choose to be here
nevertheless. And you are standing right next to me.” Journal entry, May 16,
2018.
The first year, all I could see was
my broken heart. The second year, I desperately tried to fix it and forget
about the cracks. It wasn’t until the third year that I saw the beauty in the
cracks, that I noticed they are what lets the light in, as Leonard Cohen puts
it so eloquently in one of his songs. The third year is where I found a balance
and saw my heart in its entirety. Broken and whole at the same time. I did not
yet know that strength and determination were not the same. Strength requires a
counteract of softness and I did not yet find that in the second year. I was
ready. More than anything, I wanted to be ready. I wanted to connect with the
rest of the world again. And I believed that in order to do that, I had to
suppress so much of the pain in my heart. I didn’t find my softness until the
third year. One of my friends recently called me a badass with the heart of an
angel (technically Keanu Reeves said it first), referring to how even after
going through hell, I still found a kindness in my heart for others and for me.
I was ready to find a place for the
memories. It was a time of rebuilding myself around the cracks. This also meant
facing some of those cracks head on. Though it may sound like I was reaching
the end of my grief journey, it turned out I wasn’t quite there yet. Once I had
made it through desperation and learned to carry the sadness, the guilt reared
its ugly head. I had always felt it there but ignored it as best as I could. I
should have charged my phone the night Kerry died, so when he called me 20
minutes before the accident, maybe I would have been more diligent about
finding out what was going on. I should have gone out with him that night
instead of opting for a quiet night at my family’s house. I should have… The
guilt had built up in my chest for a few years now, creating a tightness that I
had grown so accustomed to that in no longer questioned it. What I hadn’t
realized is that the guilt was masking anger, the stage of grief I had thought
I avoided. I had to acknowledge that I was angry at Kerry. Angry for how the
accident happened. Angry for Kerry having been so careless. But mostly angry
for having left me behind all on my own.
That act of acknowledgment, as
painful as it was, resulted in me being ready for something that resembled
acceptance. So where am I know? I’m in a place where I carry the love and loss
of Kerry with me, as graceful as I can. I feel him in my heart, a stillness and
softness that is quite new. I share happy and sad memories of him without
crying. Waves of sadness still hit me from time to time but somehow, I can just
let them be. I have learned that letting the tears in doesn’t mean they will
take over. It doesn’t mean I will be nothing but sadness. I purposefully try to
hold space for the grief. And for me, the tears are the cracks in my heart that
let the light in. His light, my light, and the light of the people around me.
Post Scriptum
To my amazing Kerry.
If I could, I would do it all over again. Listen to my heart, move to Vancouver
on a whim, ask your friend for your number, fall in love. Even if it meant
losing you all over again too.
The original plan was to go canoeing with my siblings. It's something we used to do now and then with my parents, camping and canoeing. I have nothing but fond memories of delicious meals, superb sleeps in our big tent, and fake paddling while letting my brothers do all the work. I traded this wish in for another magnificent one: snowboarding with my brothers. Despite having grown up with annual ski trips to Switzerland and France I only learned to snowboard after moving to Canada. So it was only right that when I went back to Europe for a visit home I finally joined my brothers on a snow trip. An unfortunate fall in my kitchen two days before leaving and the resulting fractured jaw almost ruined my plans. But in true Marieke-style I pushed through and rode the mountains anyway, under the watchful eye of my brothers. The snow was terrible (a vertical ice rink with zero grip), the painful falls and subsequent bruises plentiful, but the company sublime and the atmosphere unforgettable. So much so that my parents decided to reinstate the annual snow vacations. Maybe next time I'll try to start the trip fracture-free though.
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| Sneaky little card hiding behind the manger. |
