Let the midlife bell of grief ring. It not only announces our losses; it proclaims our healing. Joyce Rupp
Autumn has closed its door. Winter has been cracked open. A dusting of snow sits on the disheveled brown gardens and the sky casts gray on the world below. I try to find the right words to describe my feelings. Sad, anxious, reluctant, angry. All seem to match the landscape.
It is the week of Thanksgiving and the college boys are home. Leading up to their arrival, we heard minute by minute wonderings if these sorts should come home to their parents bringing with them the dreaded COVID19. Should they get tested first? Should they quarantine? What should we do? What will this mean for the surge of cases growing across the planet? Are we condoning this disease by saying “yes” to our need to touch home base. I am weary of figuring out what is the right thing to do. I am tired of uncertainty.
Living through 2020 and all it has held has brought daily grief. It has been named “ambiguous loss”. Loss that isn’t death of a loved one. It’s the death of dreams, normalcy, assumptions of what life is supposed to be. It is the same ambiguous loss found in midlife. Not sure who we are anymore, a body that looks and acts differently, and the reality of time becoming more urgent.
Naming my grief, what I am grieving with both my midlife and 2020 helps me see what is occupying my soul. Hearing myself say out loud or to another of what is gone, even if temporary loosens its hold on me.
I have appreciated 2020 more because it came along with my work in my midlife journey. I have had space to feel. I have had to learn to let go of any sense of control if I wanted peace. Virus’s like people have their own agenda and behaviors. None mine to predict.
There is one constant in this time that will not leave. A God who loves me and goes with me. In this darkness, I experience light. It is light that moves the gray sky to blue. That brings to me healing. I know it is for the world, too.
