Grief, Too, Is A Gift

November 12th came and went, and with it came some answers that I had been searching for. Knowing that I might have a hard time with eleven months approaching I scheduled an appointment with my counselor from Hospice. It had been awhile since I had been there, maybe a month and a half. I just felt the need to check in.

I guess I really started questioning myself about two weeks ago. A Christmas advertisement came on and I found myself smiling. Smiling . . . I had lost my son this time last year, yet holiday music stirred excitement in my soul. Should I really be smiling? Is that OK? How can a grieving mom smile at Christmas jingles knowing that she will have one less this Christmas season?

I don't have very many people to compare my grief to, except for my husband. We are in to very different places. I guess sooner or later, although you know better, you try to figure out who is grieving the right way. Silly, I know, but there is no manual for this, no right or wrong. Maybe that's partly why the process is so hard.

I questioned if I should be angrier. I questioned if I should appear to be more distraught. I questioned if I should be able to function at all. I don't know the answers. But I do know what I feel in my heart, and it took talking to a unbiased source to figure it out.

Grey was a gift, and continues to be. He has changed my life for the better, and will change the lives of others, with and without me knowing it. I still have a connection with Grey that would be hard for most to understand. I feel him. I smell him. I sense him everywhere. He shows me things every day, just to let me know that he still needs me.

He still needs me. He needs me to accept his gifts and use them to benefit myself and others. He needs me to be happy and to show that happiness to his brothers and his dad. He needs me to live, to breath, to laugh so that he can shine through me. And it's like he can only get to me when I'm in a good place. I don't know how to explain it. But when I'm in a dark place, he is no where to be found. Maybe his spirit is so filled with light, that he can't go there. I think that when I am lost in his loss, not even he can find me.

It's taken me nearly a year, but I think I've finally figured out what grief is to me.

Grief is:
a cardinal
his laugh
hot, caramel apple cider
DMB songs
vanilla
ink
monkeys and giraffes
dreams
my friends
Christmas lights
my mom's scar
Hunter's Hope
pumpkin pie
baby blue
re-connections
my husband's eyes
balloons
shooting stars

I'm sure my grief is much more. As painful as my grief is, it is all the things that I love. I guess my grief is, and always will be, my Grey. How can I not welcome it?