Wide Open Spaces

Grief is a weird and fickle beast, and like the proverbial elephant in the room, it can only be ignored for so long. In a span of less than four years I lost my mom, I moved across town after twenty-one years in the same house, I lost my dad, I had two major surgeries with organ removals, I quit my day job of fifteen plus years, my son graduated college and moved out on his own, and I ended an eight year stint of coaching. Oh, and yes, in the middle of it all there was a pandemic to navigate along with the rest of the world.

I’ve think I’ve avoided truly grieving each loss along the way. At times because I was afraid, at times because it felt self-indulgent, at times because I didn’t feel like I had the space to do so while managing other responsibilities, at times because I didn’t think the people around me could handle it, or would think less of me for not being strong enough to suck it up, and ultimately because wide open spaces aren’t easily navigated.

• Fear – My life verse is 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind (or self control).” I am afraid of grief largely because I fear losing control or my soundness of mind. What if I go down that path and I don’t know how to come back? What if the path doesn’t have an end? Wide open space to a horizon that doesn’t seem to reach a boundary. 

• Self-Indulgence – Grief feels very me-centered. With regard to losing my parents I think this has been unavoidable: I don’t have siblings, my grandparents are all dead, and my remaining aunts and uncles are distant. Who would share my feelings and memories and wonderings? Even when we find others who have had similar experiences, no two stories or relationships are truly the same, so grief is bound to be unique and lonely. A wide open space that is being navigated solo with no set path trampled by others who’ve gone before.

Every breaking wave on the shore

Tells the next one there’ll be one more

“Every breaking wave” u2

• Responsibilities – This one is a two-edged sword. Often our responsibilities get in the way of our grief, and often they are our life preserver helping us keep our heads above the open seas. In the direct after of each of my losses I dove into my responsibilities: my job, my coaching, my looking after others, packing and unpacking our homes, etc. Sometimes I knew I was consciously avoiding grief, and sometimes these tasks were what kept me moving forward so that depression didn’t take hold. But as one of my favorite songs states, “Every breaking wave on the shore, tells the next one there’ll be one more…” No matter what I used to fill my head, heart, and time, those waves were going to continue to break. As the song goes on to say, I needed to let them sweep me off of my feet and learn to navigate that tide, rocks and all. 

• Others – This one may be the hardest open space for me personally. This may be because in losing my parents I have also had to come to terms with some misconceptions I had about their relationship with each other, and their relationships with me. I’ve been left with questions that may never have answers. My ability to trust my own judgment has been hampered. I do worry what others think. I assume their patience with my processing has limits and I don’t know where those limits are…another wide open space that I’m fearful of navigating, or even beginning to traverse. I put a toe in that water, maybe even wade out knee deep, but my feet stay planted, ready to turn as soon as the floor feels the least bit unstable.

It’s possibly a tad ironic to use an analogy of unnavigable spaces today. We have every imaginable device literally at our fingertips to help us find our way. GPS is native to our cars, our computers, and our mobile phones, which may as well be an extension of our own bodies. We are too used to being able to find our way. While I enjoy the discipline of reading a map or following a trail marking system, I still pull out “the Google” if I question my way in the woods while out on a run, hike, or bike ride. I can read signs on the road, but it’s just easier to have Siri tell me where to turn, letting me know in advance which lane to be in. And speaking of Google, or the internet, we also have at our disposal a compendium of information and answers to more of life’s questions than we may ever need.

Unfortunately, grief doesn’t operate within the bounds of modern technology. We have to experience, navigate, and answer it “unplugged.” Each of us has to tackle the wide open space  like a pioneer with little to go on but just the constantly changing lay of the land. Certainly it’s conquerable if we are willing to dive in and let it surround us; if we are willing to lose our footing  along the way and learn to swim.