Happy September! It's hard to feel fall vibes because it's 100 degrees here in Southern CA. But I put a pumpkin pillow on my bench outside today, so there are signs!
It's been a while since I did a grief update. Here I am, almost three and a half years in. So hard to believe. The thing about grief I notice the most is that the world doesn't stop for it. It goes on around you, loud, fast, and clueless. Most people don't see it. They just see you working, playing, smiling and expect you to keep up. I consider myself very fortunate to have close people in my life that know my grieving hasn't stopped, it will never stop. Through the smiles and laughter, the work, and the good times, I think all grievers are usually just one step away from being pulled down by the undertow of grief. I don't fight it, in fact I lean into it now and let it pass through me. Each time it leaves I'm a little bit lighter than before. The sadness has stayed the same, but the coping has gotten easier.
A few months ago, I was on my treadmill and I was watching a YouTube travel vlog of a walk though Paris. Just a person with a camera who films as they walk, nothing planned, no dialogue just the sounds of the people and busy streets. I love walking the streets of Paris, so I find it fun to watch these videos and it keeps me on the treadmill longer. But on this day, I was stopped in my tracks. To the point of shock that if I didn't push the EMERGENCY STOP button I would have rolled under the treadmill and gone pancake flat and kept rolling like George Jetson. As I was watching, a man came around a corner, an identical match to My Mike. My dead husband.
It was winter in the vlog, at night, the street was busy and decorated for the holidays, and there he was. Such the spitting image of him that I literally couldn't breathe. After a moment I rewound to find him again, then again, and again. He was with a woman, (she looked nothing like me), he grabbed her hand to get through a small crowd of people. Mike would have done that. He was even wearing a black leather coat identical to Mikes, still hanging in my closet.
Some people call this a doppelgänger, a German word meaning double-walker, a non-biological look alike for another person. I continued to frantically rewind it stopping and playing it in slow motion. I took a screen shot and cut out the woman (of course). I texted it to my daughter, one of Mike's sisters, and his stepmom. I didn't say anything but "look at this picture". The responses where, "where was this?" "where were you guys here?", and "I never saw this picture of Mike before". They all thought it was him. When I told them it wasn't they were shocked. And for me, all of a sudden, I felt like my husband was alive, out there somewhere in Paris living another life without me! It was so unsettling. It took me about three weeks to stop thinking about jumping on an airplane to roam the streets of Paris to find this man.
Why did I watch that particular vlog on that particular day? And why did that particular man look exactly like my husband? Maybe it was a reminder that life is full of unexplainable surprises and unanswered questions. The kind that don't ever have answers. Like why do good people die while bad people go on living. As with grief, there are only two ways to handle the questions that will never have answers. We except them or not. If we accept them, we get to experience life, and hopefully joy. If we don't accept them, these things we cannot change, we are living a life of constant soul crushing angst. The good news is we have that choice.
I often remind myself of the quote by the 13th Century poet Rumi "The eye goes blind when it can only see why". This quote is a reminder that sometimes there is just no rational cause or justification for something. No answer to 'why'. Maybe it's a call to embrace life's mysteries (whether we like them or not) rather than constantly trying to dissect them. Which I think can drive you crazy.
People often tell me I'm doing great. I say thank you. They don't get it, and that's OK. The truth is I can be happy and sad, thriving with a broken heart, traveling, working, crying, reminiscing, and making new memories and adventures. All the things at once. That is what makes life beautiful. It's my grief journey. No rules. It's like I always say, yes, I'm going great, but my husbands still dead.
And what fun is a blog without some pictures. So as September rolls in here's some little bits of summer...
