Slogging it out

I'm not even sure anyone is even checking this anymore because I haven't posted anything for so long. It's been hard to know what to say the last few months. Pretty much since the anniversary of Midi and Nathan's deaths in January, I've been mildly depressed: tired, not wanting to initiate or even be around others much, withdrawn, etc. Really the whole first year I was much more in reaction mode, shock perhaps, emotionally reeling from what happened and processing things in a more intense fashion. But at this point, I've stopped reacting and perhaps have internalized a bit more that I will never have Midi and Nathan back in my life. And with that has come the more depressive state.

While I think this is a pretty normal grieving stage, it's been exhausting coping with life while feeling like this. With young kids and a job in ministry that requires lots of emotional output and care of others, it's been hard to have my internal world be down more and to still having to engage with others all the time. Counseling has been helpful, particularly as God has been bringing up deeper issues for me in the last month or so in the midst of the depression. My husband, who is naturally of a more melancholy disposition, has been very sympathetic. But it's been an adjustment to us, after 16 or 17 years of relating to each other in one form or another with me as an extrovert, to have both of us just lumping around the house. We've actually had to make a point of setting aside time to talk to each other because otherwise neither of us has the energy for it!

I've been re-reading Jerry Sittser's book A Grace Disguised, which has been helpful. It's about his own grief process after losing his wife, mother and daughter in a car accident. He similarly describes falling into a depression at the year anniversary of their deaths, much more deep than mine, understandably so. As he put it, "(Depression) rarely follows immediately after th eloss. It occurs at the end of th efight, after the denial yields to reality, the bargaining fails, the binges lead to emptiness and the anger subsides. Then there is no will or desire left to resist the inevitable and undeniable." Several of his other comments have also resonated a lot with me.

"Those who suffer loss live suspended between a past for which they long and a future for which they hope... Memories of th epast only remind them of what they have lost; hope for the future only taunts them with an unknown too remote even to imagine."

"Catastrophic loss is like undergoing an amputation of our identity... Loss thus leads to a confusion o fidentity. Since we understand ourselves in large measure by the roles we play and th erelationships we have, we find ourselves in a vertigo when these are changed or lost."

"Loss forces us to see the dominant role our environment plays in determining our happiness. Loss strips us of the props we rely on for our well-being."