In Peter Pan, Neverland is an idyll where children never grow up and the cares of adults don't hold sway. The Neverland where I'm currently living could rightly be called its opposite.
I'll explain.
One of the most difficult concepts I've been trying to work through in my grieving is the finality of death. That yes, spirit does continue (or at least that's what I choose to believe), and there is still some relationship to that sense of spirit—sometimes a presence felt, an odd serendipity to something that happens. But the word that keeps coming back to me is "never." Never another hug, never another Sunday night phone call, never any number of things that have always been present in my life and eagerly looked forward to. They are not going to happen again, ever. Every time I really engage myself with that, I get a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball and just want to curl up fetally for a while.
We will all go on, of course (we are already going on), but these kinds of moments are amazingly sneaky. They hit at work, on the commute home, in between episodes of Will & Grace, in the middle of otherwise happy circumstances. They demand to be heard and honored, right now, even if it just means swallowing hard and promising to cry later.
I think it's no accident, given all this, that I've been sick for most of the time I've been home; my immune system is clearly worn down from a year of stress about Mom's illness and the additional heartache of the six weeks caring for her and their aftermath. But I'm doing the best I can to take care of myself on all fronts, and hoping that the move to a new office at work next month will give us some literal breathing room so that we don't all keep infecting each other. It's a bit like a petri dish at the moment.
So, to paraphrase something Mom often said, "Grief isn't for sissies." She usually referred to aging, and even once to her cancer treatment I think, but it's apt for many situations, so I'll borrow it for mine.
