We often talk about grief as it relates to the loss of a loved one. I went to a talk last weekend where the topic was grief and the entire session was focused on death and dying. I am certainly not diminishing grief related to death and dying. There is a different weight to this sort of grief. But I found myself aching for the talk to expand to loss in general.
The dictionary defines grief as deep distress caused by loss. Bereavement simply means being deprived of someone or something. In other words, grief isn’t reserved for death. It belongs anywhere we’ve lost something that mattered.
My personal experience with grief is not tied to the death of a loved one, although I know that grief is coming as my parents age. Most of the grief I’ve experienced hasn’t come from death. Instead it came from the end of my marriage, losing a job, betrayal by a parent, loss of physical mobility, and now it’s my children moving into adulthood…the loss of my mommy identity.
These grieves are real and painful. I believe that most transitions that we experience come with some level of grief. In order for change to happen, we have to end something. Sometimes we make the choice to end the thing, but sometimes the ending is outside of our control.
But without those endings, we have no room for new possibilities. And as I think about my children fledging, I am starting to see new possibilities.
I want to pause for a moment to acknowledge the things that I am excited about.
Once they both leave in the fall, I will save a lot of money on groceries. I will be able to consistently keep my house clean. I will only do laundry for myself. I will be able to come and go as I please without having to consider someone else’s schedule. I will be able to take the money I save on groceries and extra utilities to take myself on a vacation, and I can take that vacation whenever I want. I can have friends over whenever I want without worrying about bothering my kids. I can go to Target and only buy the one or two things I had on my list. I can schedule visits with my kids and pamper them for a weekend and get excited time with them because we don’t see each other very often. I can begin to reclaim myself as whole human and plan a future for my second chapter.
This grief, the last few months of feeling the loss so deeply, is starting to lift so that I can see the space. There is space for me to fill outside of the grief. And that’s pretty beautiful.