Healing your heart when you are grieving is a slow process. It takes time to put those broken pieces back together one by one. I picture a broken vase. You can attempt to glue all the tiny pieces you find on the ground back together one by one. It will take some time, patience and concentration to make all those pieces stick together and look like a vase again on the outside. Still, on the inside it isn’t sealed or whole any more and water will most likely leak out.
When you are trying to take baby steps to move forward and heal in your grief your heart will slowly be pieced back together with each step you take. It will take patience and hard work but your heart, like the broken vase, even though it may be put back together on the inside will still never be the same.
Recently, I took another baby step in my healing process. To someone else what I did may seem small, insignificant, easy and maybe even stupid. To me, it was giant.
After our house flooded I was left with almost all our personal belongings ruined. Everything had been submerged in water and was left covered with coats of mud. Most everything had to go to the dump, but there were quite a few items of Mike’s that no matter how muddy and ruined they were I just couldn’t toss them out. I ended up getting a storage unit to store all that muddy stuff in. There it has all stayed for the last three years. Multiple times I would go there to reorganize and bring more of Mike’s things to store. I would tell myself today is the day I need to get rid of any of the muddy stuff that was left, yet I would leave and it would all stay there. I knew that logically those items weren’t even salvageable and it was all incredibly contaminated with god knows what was in those flood waters, yet I could never do it. I could never get rid of any of it. I couldn’t throw any pieces of Mike away.
My dad was here visiting last month and he is always willing to help me around the house with whatever I need. I wanted to organize our garage a bit to make more room, which meant I needed to take some items to the storage unit. With my dad there to help I decided it was time.
It was time to take another baby step.
We opened up that rolling door and there sat covered in dried mud two of Mike’s drum sets which were in pieces, guitar accessories, police gear, ruined pictures in broken frames, wrestling mats, bikes and so much more that was unsalvageable and really had become trash. One by one my dad helped me load up every item into the bed of the truck. When we were done we got back into the truck to head to the dump. My dad looked at me and said, this is a really big step.
As we arrived at the dump and we threw item after item out of the truck into the pile of trash I felt a myriad of feelings… sadness, guilt, relief, accomplishment.
There was no rationale in my thinking as to why I thought I needed to keep these items that we could never use again or even bring into our house except for the fact that they were Mike’s. I want to save anything of his for the boys and I felt an extreme amount of guilt for even thinking of getting rid of anything that was his, trash or not.
I did it. I took another baby step that was a giant step in my healing process. And really something that just plain made sense to do. A lot of times grief will cloud our judgement and that has often happened to me.
I’m not the only one that takes baby steps in my healing. My sons do as well.
One of my sons has had a fear, almost a phobia of movie theaters since his dad died. Not long before Mike died the two of them went to the movies together. Then, months later my sister took him to the movies and he had a panic attack. They had to leave and he was so upset. Again, I tried to take him to the movies and he had another freak out to where we had to leave in the middle of the movie. Over 3 years has gone by and he has never been to another movie in the theater. He gets invited by friends often and we go as a family, yet he stays home.
Last weekend David took the kids to the movies to see Call of the Wild. We assumed he’d get tickets for just three out of the four knowing that our one son would not want to go. But to our surprise he said he would try. David ended up taking all four kids and our son sat through the whole movie with no panic attack, no anxiety attack and had a great time. It also shows how he feels safe with his dad on earth because never once did he ask me to go. He even came home saying he thinks he will start going to the movies again.
He took another baby step, which was giant in his healing process.
Sometimes we discount those baby steps that we take thinking that they are unimportant or insignificant like the steps my son and I have recently taken. Any step as small or as huge as it may be will still get you closer to your destination. A destination of healing, happiness, hope and honor to your loved one that you miss so much.
