Grief Is Another Name For Love.

This post discusses the loss of my father, cancer, my ongoing surprise at the cycles of sadness. I also share how I’ve learnt that love can be a great healer in the times when grief bites you in the bum! Please proceed with caution if these are sensitive subjects for you.

I still find it astonishing, even after 21 years.

You would imagine that it would get easier, and in many ways it has. I can now celebrate the many times we enjoyed, and I can look back with joy in my heart rather than total devastation and, more often than not, anger. Anger with you for not going to see the doctor sooner, that they couldn’t catch it in time because you wouldn’t tell anyone. You fought it for a number of years, never admitting that you were going to die, even after they said it had spread to your bones, and liver. The time they thought you had a stroke, but it was really rogue cells floating around in your brain.

Your strength has probably inspired me more than I admit.

For many years every time I saw someone whose life you had touched they would say “oh, haven’t you got your father’s eyes.” They always missed out the eyebrows, chin and nose!  And what about your stubbornness, dry wit and sense of adventure. Did I get those traits through nature or nurture? You were a stay at home dad until I started school, and even after that I was like your shadow. Saturday mornings in the shop are memories I will always treasure, the touch of felt will always take me back to that time.

Grief is a funny thing though, as is love.

Every year in the lead up to your anniversary something makes me feel like my heart has been broken. I never equate the two immediately, but tonight was a quicker realisation than the standard day or two. Maybe I am learning with time. Perhaps next year I will surprise myself with allowing the sadness without needing other hurts to bring it out.

The grieving process is a cycle, after all. It will resurface.

This evening I was driving home from delivering my boys to their dad. It’s the holidays and I get a rest too. I was thinking about events from the last week or so. You see, when Sir left again in July I felt a little sad. I knew that I wouldn’t hear from him until at least February, and even if I did I wasn’t sure how that would feel. My need to submit took a sabbatical. I have been exploring this wonderful world of kink in different ways. Enjoying myself greatly, but as time wore on my mojo drifted.

Recently a few things have happened which have made me realise that, although enjoying the opposite sides of myself, I had actually been hiding my submission. It hadn’t left me, just curled up inside too scared of being exposed and vulnerable. The intensity of my submissive love and the loss thereafter too hard to face again. Grief is not just felt for those who have died.

Driving along I felt my heartbreak all over again, my eyes burning with tears held back too long.

I knew that I needed to run, and once I was safely home I did just that. Not 200m from my front door I realised why. I’ve come home, spoken about the resurgence of my grief to a lovely friend (you’d love her, she’s completely mad). I have talked about you more than I have with anyone in years. Hopefully you would be proud of the woman I have become, the way I have conducted myself when times have been hard and the way I am raising the two grandsons you will never get to meet. More often than not I need to be strong just like you were, sometimes I need to laugh until my sides aches and occasionally I need a good cry.

Tonight, astonishingly, I have done all three.