I don't think I made it clear that I traveled back to Vancouver this weekend for the next two weeks, or maybe I did. I look at emails I've sent this past week and think, 'Really? I wrote that?'
I find myself wanting to clap my hands over my mouth, as though I have no control of what's coming out. My words are stripped bare and sometimes, the tone and ways of my delivery are barbed and pointed. Not intentionally of course. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone in my family any more than we're already hurting.
Grief is so different for everyone. And what you think from one week, even one day, to the next changes on a dime.
These days, I'm grateful for my super power that numbs, the internal fog machine that packages the pain and softens it so that I can carry on. My true self, the Kristen whose heart is cracking slowly, hourly, is tucked away until later, when I can grieve on my own terms and time.
Right now, I'm here to help my sister. Help her by just spending time with her*, spending time with her kids and of course, helping with the things that need to be taken care of. I am the task master, keeping myself on a track of effective efficency; trying to be useful with the two weeks time I have here.
But also knowing that I need to self preserve. I'm making myself take a walk every morning. My sister lives along a river and the walkway, (quay), is stunning and verdant. Spring flowers are bursting forth and I spied 3 lush peonie bushes, the petals a deep, bloody red, my favorite.
I have my journal and I've been writing morning, everyday pages, almost daily. Some days, the words that need to come are too raw and I'm unable to say them, even on a page.
I'm not fretting in my usual way. I'm trying so hard to not read into anything everything, I'm really just trying to be open and available.
In February after heavy shit went down, my acupuncturist said that I'd learn what my message and lesson was and I'd know it when it came. And what I'm learning about myself and my message, is pretty fucking incredible I have to say.
*that's really for me isn't it? the need to spend as much time together as we can, because after a person's gone, do they really know? i don't know. sigh.
