Simultaneity: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Beautiful Confusion

Over the six months since Dana died, grief has taught me a few things.  One of the most interesting is that I can feel utter joy and the deepest anguish over the exact same thing and at the exact same time.  The most obvious example is when I think of the love Dana and I shared but have to simultaneously acknowledge that she's gone.  Or when I hold our granddaughter and am so grateful that Dana was there for her birth and for the first (almost) two months of her life, but so saddened and angry that she's not here to see her grow.  I don't know if other animals are capable of this or not, but it seems to me to be a quintessentially human trait. 

As troubling as it can be to try and sort out those feelings, rather than contradiction, I find a sense of wholeness in them.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined beauty as "multeity in unity"... "that in which the many, still seen as many, become one."  Being human is all about integrating all the different aspects of ourselves... our experiences and desires, our thoughts and our emotions, our pain and our joy, and our disappointments and our hopes.  Ultimately, I suppose that's what I really see in this often confusing mish mash of reactions to a memory or to something brand new -- beauty and hope. 

Even in our darkest times, humans are incredibly resilient.  For some, that reslience may stem from a religious faith.  For others, like me, it's a more Darwinian view of the human capacity to adapt and overcome challenges.  Don't get me wrong, I still feel lost at times... completely at sea in a widower's fog.  And I know that it will continue to happen perhaps for the rest of my life.  But I also know that those bouts are starting to be shorter-lived and farther between.  More importantly, I always come through and find my way to solid ground where I can wait for the mist to clear again, at least for a while.

Similarly, the passage of time has that same sense of self-cotradiction.  I say I can't believe it's been six months already and in the same breath I'm saying how can it be only six months?  In truth, I've barely begun this journey toward a new normal, but many of the folks here are even newer members of this club that none of us asked to join.  Widowhood is not something any of us wished for.  But it will be part of what defines us from this point forward.  Just know that that's going to be ok.  This kind of loss is not something to get over.  But we can get on with it.  It can be hard at first to see life just going on around you as people tend to the ordinary business of living as though nothing changed, even though your entire world is upside down.  But at some point, you'll take comfort in that very fact that the living press forward.  And you'll join them when you're ready.