9. Coming Home

Featured on "Facing Grief - The Podcast" August 19, 2020.

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Written Thursday, August 29, 2019 / Day 17 / Evening

We have come home hundreds if not thousands of times. It's just a normal part of life. But when there has been a loss - coming home will never be the same.

In one sense there is no home anymore. What home there was included the person now gone. There is a void - a hole - actually a crater where there had once been a home.

Going home becomes one of the biggest reminders of the loss. One of the most difficult to face.

When you are out - dealing with something - there may be a tug, an unsettled feeling that the new reality exists - but stepping inside that door activates a new level of awkwardness.

Something is missing.

Really missing.

It's something you can't ignore - only endure.

Instead of home being your safe place, a place of family and love - it becomes the place where the family and love - used to be.

Oh sure there are the memories and all - they are important - but at the moment you open that door the resounding reality announces what you know deep in your heart.

You are now alone.

Everything in the home screams the presence of the one who is gone.

In my case I play my grief logic routine...I know she is safe, she is no longer suffering...God took her...I was there when He did...and in my case..she was good with all of that.

Well that's great for her - there's just one little problem:

I'm still here.

Home becomes the epicenter of my progress. How was it today? Oh not too bad. Did you cry right away or did it take a while?

It's the yardstick of my grief. Just step in the door and just look who is waiting for you - grief. And he brought his friends emptiness and despair.

What a party.

Coming home in the afternoon is preferable to coming home in the evening. Darkness just makes it ever so much more distasteful.

So I pray and focus on what I can. Just resting, preparing a meal, answering emails or perhaps writing an essay such as this one.

These activities do have their part.

But when grief tries to take me to the place I do not want to go to - I just jump ahead and go there myself. I go through my grief logic routine - I focus on her - not the past.

When I get to my endless love for her - that's where I pray for supernatural help. And although it is the worst of the worst moments for me - I use it to beseech God that in my view He made this decision to take her and only He can supply me with the power to understand what life will be without her.

I cannot do that - nor at my deepest inner level do I want to be separated from her. But I am.

So the exercise will continue.

I have been writing a lot this week and interestingly it helps at some background level. Not enough to change the despair and longing for the impossible - but I sense a small movement.

I know my prayers will be answered. I know that coming home will not be so difficult.

I ask God to turn my grief into strength. Take this anguish and turn it into building material. Material so I can build a legacy for my love and my sweetheart.

This I feel can happen.

It's just not happening yet.

Coming home will get better.

When will that be?

I just have to keep coming home to find out.