Thursday, October 15, 2015

Acceptance Hurts

Summer Vacation 2.0 was a huge success. I will write about that later...because I have reached a new layer in grief...and I have to get it out of my head...so I can move on...hopefully...

I've been saying to myself (since I got back from Summer Vacation 2.0) that I don't miss Tony. It feels weird. It feels wrong. But I don't miss him. I can talk about him fondly. The kids and I had great conversations about him. I don't regret anything about my marriage, but I don't miss him. It had a feeling of numbness, though. I knew there had to be more to it than just not missing him. I was dreading the "what happens next...because it has to be something awful"...it always seems to be something awful...just my opinion...grief is awful...all layers and levels of it. I had hoped that acceptance would be magical...bing!, I have now accepted the death of my husband...all if good in the world...life is now easy... Of course, it can't be quite that easy. So I went to my therapist/counselor/friend and talked to him about it. He told me that acceptance has levels, too. Yay!!!(read with extreme sarcasm) He also said that if I have made it to a level of acceptance, it doesn't mean I won't go back to one of the other stages of grief. Double Yay!!!!! 

So here I am, moving on towards acceptance and feeling guilty about it. It's only been a year and a half. What does that say about me? I was married for 21 years, and it only takes a year and a half to get over him. Wow! I must be a tad selfish....horrible...not loyal at all. Then my therapist/counselor/friend reminded me that I had had to start mourning the loss of my husband even before he died...because I knew his mind and body were failing. Yes, I knew that I had many, many years more with him, but I wouldn't have the whole man I loved with me...he was becoming a shell of who he was. So I had actively started saying goodbye to my dreamed future a long time before his sudden death. So, yes, he has only been dead for a year and a half, but I had been grieving the loss of him starting around 5 years ago.

So I am now working through feeling guilty for starting to accept his death. This guilt has caused me to become physically sore and sick. It's been a fun day (sarcasm). I'm praying for acceptance of this acceptance level of grief. I'm praying for it to not last long...the painful stuff. I'm nervous for the next layer. In case you have ever wondered, Acceptance is not the final answer...it is just a stage with many layers. Maybe one day I will make it to an end to grief...I don't know if there is an end...I had always thought there kinda was an end...but......

Acceptance hurts. I'm not happy. I choose joy by continuing working with the youth group. This week was my first week back since probably the beginning of June. I was nervous. It was awesome. I love these kids. I don't know a lot of them, but most of them are awesome...jk....I'm supposed to say that they are all awesome...I'm in pain, so give me a break... Last night we had a barfing kid...I don't do barf unless it's adding to it...I decided that there's nothing like a bunch of barf to bond youth group leadership. So I now have my youth family back, and that's how I choose joy.                                                           JOY