Grief is weird...a.k.a...My address book is a mess.

 

Who would have thought that a simple tool could hold such emotional weight?

I'm sure we've all been through that moment when we go to the address book and see the name of a dear one who is gone and feel yet another edge of that loss.

This is always a sad moment, but after our son took his life in 2018, flipping the pages to check the addresses of family members became almost unbearable. 

I could certainly not erase his beloved name from the page. 

I may never be able to do that.

I also could not keep having my heart lacerated every time I wanted to send a card to any of our other family members.

It was too much.

I found a little pocket-sized address book that I think my mom gave me one time and decided to use it. I went through the pages of the old book, transcribing names and addresses to the new one. Our last name falls early in the alphabet, so I was in rough shape for most of this project.

This is why the book is a mess.

I was still in shock, exhausted, and battered by the pain of passing by Michael's name; not carrying it forward.This was, of course, the whole point of what I was doing. It was still heavy and hard.

In the four years since that day, I have found strings of names in the wrong sections, and worse, names and addresses I somehow failed to transfer. I have had cards to dear people come back to me, because I'd jumbled the address in the new book. I lost the addresses of two long-term friends, and only re-found the through roundabout means in recent months.

I look at the mess I made of this much-needed information and I feel frustration, but also...compassion for the sad and battered self I was on that day.

Grief is messy and hard and it complicates our lives. It shows up in weird ways, throwing wrenches in unexpected gears.

May we extend gentle grace to ourselves and to others in similar state.