I Recognize You Now

I finally put my finger on it.  It was grief.  I am emerging from an eleven-month period of feeling acute loss.  Tears would well up at any time.  Driving in the car on the way to work was Prime Time for tears. I figured it out two weeks ago.  I can name the day when it started, and I can now give it a voice.

I am fifty-nine years old and I have eight grandchildren.  This is amazing to me. My four children are essential to me.  I grew up with them, tried not to break them, and now they are my friends. I lean on them, and remarkably to me, they occasionally lean on me. While it may not be strictly accurate, there seems to have been one or two grandchildren per year for about six years. They run the painter’s pallet from blonde with bright blue eyes, light brown locks and soft brown eyes, black hair with gray-green eyes, and most recently, strikingly red hair with Texas blue bonnet eyes.  While my children are the air that I breathe, my grandchildren are the blood that runs through my veins.

In a string of summers my husband and I have helped our children move to and from towns to accommodate entry into colleges, transitioning into graduate school, overseas jobs, medical school, or dental school.  With the exception of mainland China, they all been relatively close to home, until last summer.  They all seemed to travel further away from home, all at once.

My second son, his wife, and two daughters moved in with us for a short time.  They were expecting a third daughter around Christmas.  The raven haired child was born and brought home to a busy household. We all settled into a routine. I looked forward to coming home every day. There was noise. So much noise.  But, this noise filled the part of me that loves noise.  I raised four children and I remembered the noise. The screaming, the fussing, the pouting, the relling (running + yelling), the laughter, the hugs, the chaos and the joy of it all revisited. It was the chance of a lifetime, doing it all again while trying to get it right this time. It was a chance to fix my own parenting mistakes, and be of service to my family.  I count this family time as one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

And then last July, the POD was delivered, followed by the yard sale and the packing of the POD.  And then came the truck to pick up the POD, and I lost it.  That was the moment when the loss was squarely faced, and I watched the POD roll away, followed shortly thereafter with a large portion of the blood that runs through my veins.

My first brush with deep grief, took a while to identify because it left me stunned.  So there, I’ve said it. Part of me is in Louisville, Columbia, and Provo, and I’m still breathing, and I’ve got a pulse. And most importantly, I’ve felt great love. I’ve been enlarged by love and that’s all together painful and wonderful.  Now I know grief. I realize that this was just a practice run for future times. I’ll leave that thought for another day.