Acceptance

As a counselor I have spent time learning, studying, and helping others understand the stages of grief. And, in my life, I have lost people whom I’ve dearly loved. However, what I couldn’t have expected is the incomparable depth of grief connected to the loss of a child, at least in my heart. It feels like it is, and will just always be, wrong. It’s just not the natural cycle of life.

I have spent a lot of time over the last four years — more than I can comprehend — deeply and truly missing my Melina. Truly … in every moment of every day. Tonight a song came on and I heard the artist say this song changed his life. I listened in a little harder and then I heard the words, “when I see you again,” and this line just stuck in my brain.

Do you know that for the last four years I have never contemplated seeing Melina again? Never. I mean I hold my beliefs, and no doubt, I have faith that I will one day. But my brain, my grief, has blocked comprehension about this moment…and when? In fact, every time this thought has occurred to me, I have frozen, tears streaming, because it has taken me directly back to her absence. But this time, the moment I heard those lyrics, my grief seemed to take on a different shape, a feeling of peace … wonder of what that moment would be.

I was actually quite stunned. Like how can the same thought on a different day bring you to the ground, sobbing and then bring you hope and peace. This is the waves of grief that will never make sense. And truly I have stopped trying to make sense of any of it. I have accepted that on any given day I can fluctuate within all the stages. There is no permanency to any one feeling in life.

This is the game I play as a grieving parent. To the world we continue to function. I smile, I laugh, I live, and I love big. I screw up, I fail, but like everyone I try to be the best I can. But there is always a part of me that is broken. I recently read it as a rainbow that goes through me, but with this level of grief there is a shade of black that has become part of my rainbow. Most days that shade remains small but sometimes that darkness can win. I don’t know when and I don’t know where those moments change. But they do. But tonight in that moment of peace I didn’t experience the overwhelming dark. For a moment I saw my Melina smiling with her crazy curls. Truly smiling, and those blue eyes. Tonight was a gift.

Since Melina passed I have struggled to see images of her in my head. I see pictures that I took but in my memories I can’t see her face. Our bodies protect themselves. And her images are just too painful. Imagining is pain. But for tonight it wasn’t. Tonight for a moment love won in a different way. Tonight maybe I did have a moment of acceptance.

Will I ever accept my Melina is gone, no. But that is not what acceptance of grief means. To me it means I know she isn’t here and it’s okay to hate it. But it’s also okay to have brief moments of peace and hope knowing my baby will be with me again. And when she is, there is no doubt in my mind that darkness will be gone and in its place will be pure Joy, Melina Joy.