Grief Revisited

Recently I have begun to wonder if my son was missing his grandfather more than usual. Dad would come up in conversation with my son in ways that I wasn't expecting. We were talking about going to a certain restaurant for Valentine's Day and my son mentioned the "next big celebration" there, and I had NO idea what he was talking about. Turned out, he was remembering how we celebrated Dad's birthday there last year. For me, that was a one time thing, but for him, apparently, it was supposed to be an annual event. At a school event, we were talking to another parent about a project the kids did in 2nd grade. When it came up, I had a fleeting thought that I had missed that project because I was home taking care of Dad. When the conversation turned to my son he said, "That was a bad day." Then I remembered that it was the day Dad died and that after the presentation at school, my husband had delivered the news.

I wasn't expecting this level of grief from my son after almost two years. I know that Dad's absence is something I am aware of every day, but the ache of it has lessened bit by bit over time. I thought I was the only one still missing him at that depth. But once I recognized the cues, I decided to address it head on. After school one day we came home, snuggled on the bed with the photo book I made after Dad died, and I asked him if he was missing Grandpa.

He dissolved into tears, throwing his arms around me. I was crushed to know he was hurting so badly.

I probably need to do a better job of talking about Dad, and talking about missing him, so my son has more regular opportunities to acknowledge his loss. I am hoping our chat helped siphon off some of the grief that he seemed to be bottling up lately. On a positive note, I think this shows the kind of person my father was and the impact he made on his grandson, considering he lived several hours away from us. I hope his impact will linger as my son gets older.

Fight the Funk

I have been fighting a funk this month. I don't quite know where it comes from - it usually sneaks up on me - but it has been happening more often lately. I think some is probably the weather. January in the Midwest is cold and can be grey and dreary. I am longing for spring and for sunshine and warmth.

Some of it feels like "burnout," too. And it's really far too early for that. I just had a three day weekend and a two week break not long ago. There's too much school year left to feel burned out in January. But the feelings are reminding me of the frantic, manic pace I kept last year as I tried to hide from grief. I worked almost all summer and didn't truly rest between school years - and this after a summer of funeral and estate business which was also draining.

The first thing that has helped the funk is coming across a Bible verse I already knew (in song form) - "Why so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God." When I notice the funk, I am trying to keep that in my head - change my focus from the bad mood to hope in God.

The other thing that helped, strangely enough, was cleaning out a file cabinet. For a year and a half now I have had a completely full file cabinet in the library work room full of materials from the last 13 years. I was so tired of prepping new books for the library, I didn't even want to think about them. But I remembered that I have this file cabinet that needs attention. It is easily tackled in small chunks of time (and I often have just that available to me) and any progress is better than no progress.

I was able to go through two file drawers and whittle them down to one so I could move some things out of my desk.

I know I'm going to have to go through things again - there are all sorts of lesson plan ideas that need to be reviewed and evaluated to see if I can use them - but it feels great to make progress on something that has been waiting for attention for a long time.

The other thing that made me happy about this task is that I was thinking it would be something I could only tackle over summer break - and I don't want to work this summer if I can help it. Now I can make some progress during the school year. Any time I can bring order out of a bit of chaos, I feel better about life in general!