It Comes In Waves.
As for grief, you'll find that it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning. The wreckage that surrounds is a reminder of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was and is now no more. All you can do is float, clinging for a while to a piece of the wreckage.
Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. But for a while, floating is all that you can manage. Waves 100 feet tall crash over you without mercy, they seem to come 10 seconds apart, there isn't time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on.
After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But, in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a certain smell. It can be just about anything ......... and the waves come crashing. But in between the waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line and it's different for everyone, you find that the waves don't seem so huge and although they still come, you begin to see them coming. An Anniversary, a Birthday or Christmas. You try to prepare yourself so that when that wave washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but, eventually you do come out.
The truth is that the waves never stop coming and somehow you don't really want them to. But you do learn that you can survive them and that even in the pain, the memory they bring with them, of the ship that was, makes them worthwhile, even makes them welcome.
Colin Worthington:
12/02/2021
