Progress Doesn’t Always Look Like Forward

There are days I feel like I’m moving forward. Those are the good days. And there are days I feel like I’m right back where I started and that used to discourage me. It felt like all the effort, and all the growth didn’t count if I could still be pulled back into the same feelings.

Now I’m starting to understand something: Progress in my grief journey isn’t a straight line. It’s layered. You see there is the immediate grief in the present where I question how I can deal with a life that centered on the loved one I lost. There is mourning of the past when all was well with our loved ones. Then, there is mourning in the future. I call them “the never wills.” My husband will not get to see his son and daughter married or his grandchildren. I will not grow old with my husband. I will just grow older. 

My husband and I went to the same college but did not meet in the one overlapping year we were both on campus. After his death, I went back to our alma mater for a 20-year-reunion. You can imagine the campus looked and felt different to me. When I attended Eastern Nazarene College I was single and pursuing a dual BS degree in early childhood and elementary education. You can revisit the same place and still not be the same person. Now I was a teacher, widow, and mother so I saw the campus through these mature eyes. That is how it is with grief as we navigate through it. Our experience with grief changes us. 

You can feel the same emotion and still be stronger in how you hold it. So, maybe I’m not going backward. Maybe I’m just seeing familiar things with new eyes.