Table For Three

Even this many months, now years, into the loss of my youngest daughter, I am finding grief patterns changing. There's no way to prepare you for the stages and phases that come, no way to erase the pain, the emotional fatigue, the sorrow. No way to let you know what is coming so that you can prepare. Just like there is no preparation for a cancer diagnosis, or that phone call, or that impact of death, there is no way to charter the course for smooth sailing through grief. Like the ocean waves, the ebb and flow of the tide, it brings new awareness and fresh revelation. It brings sludge and it brings ugliness. It brings crisp images, and beauty, and life, and birth. It is ever changing. And there is no way to prepare. One just has to learn and find their own way. And we each do it differently.

Last night as I set the table for a Sunday evening dinner (if I am cooking, Jen loves to come by on her day off for a "real meal"). I went to get the placemats out, and carried four into the kitchen. Only to realize that I needed to put one back. I went to the cabinet to get the plates and did it again, I counted out four. Realizing I only needed three took my breath away, yes, still. That blatant and obvious image that this is now a "table for three".

But, even as I go about my chores and labors of love (cooking is one of them!), and my heart is so heavy I just know I will collapse, I can also find, in that same 60 seconds, that it is full, and my spirited daughter is always with me. Her love is everywhere. This is "her" time of year, preparing for summer, making travel plans, reuniting cousins, sisters, family, planning the summer birthday celebrations, and yes, once again, heading to her haven, where the same "presence" permeates the home of her aunt and uncle as they, too, open up from a dreary winter, ready to make way for visitors, beach days, sweatshirt nights, fire pit talks, and swing conversations over wine or coffee. Perhaps that is why I sense that shadow accompanying me through my every action, thought, and activity. How intriguing that the relationship with this child has not "died" at all, but rather, taken on new form, one of hope, love and light.

Does it take a certain time for all this to "settle" and become a reality? Does it take crying a river of tears before we can fully comprehend that our cherished child's new life now comes in ways that can almost seem closer than if she lived on the planet or in the house with me? I have come to know her love is everywhere. And in that instant, I can find that I am the happiest I have ever been. That love spurs me to make new meals, try new foods, savor good wine, spend the afternoon on the patio, look at new options, go buy the plants and watch Joe plant them:), hear and see with refreshed senses, walk my constant companion in the wee hours of a spring morning, and through my sadness of setting the table for three, brings me comfort in my weakest hour, when my knees are going to buckle, and I am going to fall to the floor, a soggy, bereaved, broken hearted mother, who is learning, trying with all her might, whispering to God above to help me breathe and get through the next moment, to look around me and find all the blessings this life holds, and find the courage. The courage to look this new pattern of grief squarely in the eye of its storm and whisper back, I am going to do this, I can, I will, I must. I will accept God's grace and His reminder that Allison's memory and presence of love is what I need, is all I need, to enjoy and love all that is around me, for this moment, this day.