Closure?

Someone recently asked me if I’ve come to a point of closure now that it’s been over a year since my husband died and we’ve lived through most of the “firsts.”

First, I can only speak for me.

I have only ever been me.

I have never been anyone else.

I have never seen life from anyone else’s perspective other than mine.

Although I was born with an over-abundance of empathy and sympathy for others and a certain amount of naivety when it comes to helping others and although I have spent most of my life in fields that required me to think like someone else -  

(from being a mother to being a minister’s wife to being a teacher assistant in a BEH classroom to being a K-6 classroom teacher and even all the way back to the 3 year job / 1 year internship I had at a counseling center when I was in college with a counseling major)

- to try and see their lives from their perspectives

- to try and help them see how to get farther along on their own paths of life,

I still can only authentically see life from my own eyes and from my own experience.

Anything else is retelling it – not having lived it.

So I know that I can never presume to know how anyone else feels – even if it seems that he or she is in the exact same situation as me.

I can only claim to know what it’s like to be me - to feel what I feel. 

It’s like childbirth.  I was told about it, I read about it, and I even witnessed it but I didn’t truly know what childbirth was like until I went through it – and even with that, each of my 3 childbirths were different.

I’ve learned a lot this year – every one grieves differently and even one person can grieve 2 situations differently (ex. grieving the loss of a spouse and then grieving the loss of a child).

So, I can only speak for me.

And the question wasn’t what I’ve learned about grief in the last year.  That’s an entire book in itself. 

The question was about coming to a point of “closure.”

My long answer would take a while – with an outline covering the relief that did come on the 366^th day after Rob’s death (it was extremely subtle but relief that we had made it an entire year was there) to the fact that in any moment, usually with no warning, I can be instantly taken back in my mind to standing at Rob’s hospital bedside watching, hearing, feeling, and even smelling him die and having to watch my children watch their daddy die.  At times, it is excruciating at best. 

And my short answer is that since closure implies the “end” of something, I do not know if or when I will ever truly know closure. 

I do know that God is still holding my hand and leading me along the path.  And even when my heart feels as if it’s breaking all over again (like when Luke pops up and says things like “I can’t remember Papa’s laugh”), I know God is still diligently holding all of the pieces of my heart in His very capable Hands!

And I do know that joy in my life does happen.  There have been many moments of joy.    

But I also know that the sorrow never leaves.