Grief and happiness can co-exist

I have found that grief and happiness can co-exist, but it is hard knowledge to find, and it took me a while. 

For the first couple of months after Rob passed, I had such a hard time being happy because I felt like being happy was somehow discounting the fact that I missed him. It felt disrespectful to be happy because it was almost like I wasn’t missing him in that brief moment of happiness, but how could I not? How could I be happy? Grief and happiness are two completely opposite emotions. At first, when I would find a happy moment, I would try to shove it in the ground, just like I had to bury him. I just wouldn’t let myself truly feel it. After a while, it began to catch up to me. I loved and missed him, but how would I ever feel happy again?

It was about two months after he had passed away that somebody told me to take the kids and me to iFLY. It’s an indoor skydiving experience where you step into this big air chamber with a metal grate floor. When they turn it all on, the air just lifts you up, and you are literally suspended in the air, floating around with your arms stretched out wide. It captures the whole essence of skydiving. At one point, the instructor comes into the chamber with you, takes your hand, and whirls you around and around. We were all just belly-laughing, giggling, and smiling, and it was a pure, new experience.

I remember being there with my kids, and just feeling that rush of air into the lungs. It was freeing after being unable to breathe for so long. And I wondered why. But then it hit me that this was something we hadn’t done with him. When you go to do something that you used to do with a lost loved one, you find yourself looking for them everywhere you turn. But this new experience had no memory of him, and yet, he was there with us. There was this whole feeling of him with me, and I understood that I could experience this event with him in a new way. It brought a smile to my face to know that he could take my hand and fly with me into these new experiences, and that he could be involved in so many different ways. He could still be a part of my kids’ major events.

I began telling my kids that the role of husband and father never dies. He will be there with you. And it is the same thing everywhere else. The role of a mother, a sibling, a friend, a best friend, an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, a child. It doesn't matter what the relationship is. Those relationships never go away. It's all about creating that new relationship dynamic and watching for those fleeting thoughts that come. Those thoughts that make you wonder if your loved one is there. And the answer is yes, they are. Because if they weren't, you wouldn't have that fleeting thought cross your mind. You would just stay in your moment of thought and not even think about it. 

And so I tell my kids that when they have those fleeting thoughts, to lean into the emotion and the energy, and embrace that for a moment, and be so grateful to have that connection. They are still a part of our lives. It’s just new and different. And when you can begin to feel that new relationship, while still cherishing the sweet memories, you can feel the happiness and the grief, without either imploding the other. You get both, and it becomes magical in a new way.