There are times, moments where grief and happiness seem to integrate. Often one gives way to the other, even feeds the other, but there have been moments where they’ve co-operated.
My first experience of this was waking up on the second morning after Susie died. I was lying in bed, despairing at its sudden emptiness. It was beyond excruciating. I ached for one last vision of her and an opportunity for one last encounter with her. And so I prayed for it. “Let me just have one more moment with her.” Within seconds, our 7 year old son walked through the bedroom door, singing to himself. A bright little tune that instantly warmed my heart. “There she is,” I thought to myself, “Returning to me in song”. A whisper of calm.
There are plenty of other moments like this, often mundane. But there is “music in the mundane”. And those moments do string together to give you some sense of buoyancy.
I just wish people would stop confusing buoyancy with being better. I wish they could see that I’m only floating because of the life vests strapped around me. Take those off and I will melt into the abyss. And I wish they knew that my buoyancy is only a mask to the turmoil within.
