Good grief

I haven't posted in a while in part because it's taken me a while to get into full "rest" mode. Now that I have finished the grief class, I really haven't had anything I had to do (if you don't count cooking, cleaning, and chauffering two kids around). So of course, I have still filled up the time, but with more frivolous things like trying new recipes (if I have to cook, I might as well enjoy it a bit... if it has goat cheese in it, it sounds good to me), reading Harry Potter and the Sorcer's Stone in German, taking the kids to the Wild Animal Park with Gia and Tea Hamilton, going to Campus By the Sea on Catalina for a retreat with David and the kids, and having Mark and Lucas over (where the kids took the opportunity to dress up, Lucas as a ninja, Soren as... a guy wearing camouflage and a wicker purse), amongst other things.

So it hasn't been slow, but it has been good for me to have a minimum of things I am required to do. But all that free time has come with a cost. I very much feel that I should be making the most of this sabbatical, to get rest and to be restored. So I'm trying to choose to do things that are restful and restorative for me, like reading or swimming. But the more time I have to myself, to reflect or even just to do things for fun, the more it hits me that nothing feels good right now. If I keep busy, it at least masks a bit how horrible life feels right now. But then I feel bad for not resting more, so I slow down, only to have this wave of melancholy sweep over me again. I realize that the grief class served to give a very structured setting for my own mourning; when you're taking a class on death, there is no real attempt to feel good about it at all. So I could keep busy, and experience my grief all at the same time.

So now I'm just sitting in my grief, probably more than I have since Midi and Nathan died. It's probably "good" for me, in the sense that it's healthy, therapeutic, etc. It certainly doesn't feel good. The irony of having everything feel off to me during a season that in many other respects is quite idyllic...