Just a thought… The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. [Rabindranath Tagore]
I’m spending these days in the cocoon of our island cabin in the woods as we head into the heart-heaviest week of my year – Mother’s Day this Sunday and then the 11th anniversary of Lauren’s passing the next day. I’m always torn about what to post on Facebook that day: in many ways I’d like to forget about that morning in Jamaica when we got the call from her mother-in-law that she’d died suddenly in her sleep. In other ways I feel it’s disrespectful of her and her memory to just let the day pass.
What also crosses my mind is, Are people tired of hearing about this? because honestly I’m sure some are. That’s how grief and the world go: everything keeps turning and moving on, but you are still reminded constantly of your person, that day, the events surrounding their passing, and all of the things that still swirl in your heart and your head.
Regrets. Longings. Joy. Questions. Even anger. All of the feelings that so many people figure you should be “over” by now.
That’s not how it works. I can only tell you my experience (and this is in no way how you or anyone else should grieve; each of our experiences is as unique as our DNA). The sadness hits so much less frequently than it used to do that sometimes I feel disloyal to her. She walks with me, she listens while I talk to her, she rolls her eyes when Rob and I recall the hilarious things she said and did as a child, adolescent and adult. My heart overflows with pride for the woman and mother she became, and the people she touched on her way to her next destination.
Just as it was in those darkest days of eleven years ago, gratitude is the only way Rob and I have found to keep moving forward. Sometimes my modus operandi is to run and to stay as busy as I can in an effort to escape the inevitable question of why? and the vast unfairness of losing one’s only child. But coming to recognize that for what it is – escaping – is helping me to try to break a pattern. And that is by trying to remember one simple word: enough.
We had enough.
We have enough.
We and this life we have built are enough.
For all the love we had to give her, it was enough – enough to let her know she could move on to whatever is next in her soul’s journey.
“Enough” is a funny word that looks even stranger the more you write and read it. But it’s a word that is also an admonishment, a comfort and a reminder.
Because sometimes enough is all we get, and it’s more than we could have hoped for. And holding on to that thought, that immense gratitude, just has to be enough. Making peace with that as best I can makes all the difference.
My wish for you is that you may you have enough.