Some things I'm grieving besides my daughter

A partial inventory

Two years ago, I was able to use my bicycle on these streets at least once each month. Since I live in Canada where slick ice and wet snow blanket every surface for nearly half the year, this is almost a miracle. Except it isn’t. We just had a warm spell.

My takeaway is that even the stress of global warming comes with benefits.

I have had practice with this. The large-scale kind.

So yes, the stress of your child dying a horrible (but mercifully quick) death, comes with benefits.

When sudden life-altering change comes to you there’s no one sitting on your shoulder to show you, three years out, the good that can come from such a shock. You’d not be able to hear it anyway.

We are in the midst of all sorts of change being foisted upon us every day though aren’t we? Having allowed our daughter’s death to settle into a nest in my heart, here are the other transitions I now recognize as grief. I give time to them as all losses are worthy of a note.

This one scrapes away at my long-time personality: I am no longer efficient at the grocery store. Putting items on the conveyer belt in what I think is a grand order, aimed at making the bagging lego-logical — keeping the cold, cold — simply doesn’t happen anymore. The last cashier actually looked at me pityingly as I proudly displayed my goods in what I thought was the best order.

The brain cells I’ve lost from trauma and grief snort with laughter in many tiny ways each day. In this case the only benefit is that I can be really convincing when I play baffled and the cashier helps me bag.

Here’s another grief that, thanks to a female body of a certain age, really frosts my socks:

Coffee. My one blessed morning sacrament. She’s leaving me. Single plantation, local roaster, small-business-supporting beans. Freshly ground. Stinking up my backpack on the way home from the market. A morning cup, milky and sweet… she’s a great loss for me. It’s simply a ritual my stomach no longer tolerates more than twice a month. But with that comes a calmer nervous system and new flights of fancy like matcha or yerba mate. Not sure yet, that’s good enough.

Sadly, a wine buzz while making dinner no longer hits the same either. If I get haughty (and I do) I’ll exchange a glass of wine for horrific sleep and a case of the angries the next day. At my house we’ve dubbed any occasional liquor beverage ‘Angry Juice’. This includes the small glass of beer so well-earned after hard work. I take this as a slight to my European heritage. Work hard, play healthily? Just doesn’t satisfy me.

‘Just doesn’t satisfy you yet.’ I try and convince myself. I am hoping to build a nourishing softness that supports these bones. This body.

I can tell you that these seemingly small griefs add up. But there is a benefit to every loss. As in nature, something always back fills the torn up yard, the drained pond. Something comes. You might not prefer it, but growth continues.

And so it is with losing my daughter.

Her absence has created a space for connection with my other daughter that wasn’t possible in the same way.

Her absence means that my brain has space to worry about things other than her midnight escapades, her mental health.

Her absence means we get to help other families struggling in a way that is truly connecting. We get it now. There is a soft solidarity in that. You can’t fake it. You can’t get it from your therapist.

The depth that we get to feel goes both ways too. Deep loss and sadness means an opening to joy too. Does it not?

I’ll let you know when I see it.