Almost 3 years ago, one of my dearest friends died.
I was in the trudges of two under two. There was snot on every thing and tears from someone all the time. There were two sets of eyes who didn’t allow me to lay in the bed and feel the grief that I should have felt. At the time, I was thankful for it. I was towing a line between tired mom and Mom drinking a bottle of chocolate syrup. I couldn’t feel every emotion I probably wanted to feel. I had babies to nurse and toddlers to potty train and somebody touching me every second.
Suppress. Suppress. Suppress.
I was sad and teared up at the occasional Backstreet Boys song, random memory, or picture she took of Ella. But that deep, ugly grief never came to light.
Suppress. Suppress. Suppress.
One thing Tracy Lawrence taught me is that Time Marches On. And it did. Eventually, the Backstreet Boys brought smiles. The pictures of Ella became treasures instead of jabs. The random memories were gifts. Some of them I swear I didn’t remember doing until it came to me like something out of “That’s So Raven.” The babies that made me so crazy became kids and went off to school without my permission.
The sign that has hung on the back of my door for the past 8 years is a sign she made. It says “Lights Will Guide You Home.” It was one of many incredible lines from “Fix You,” via Coldplay. It was a song I dreaded hearing when I saw them in concert a couple of years ago, because it felt like such an unfair irony that the great loss that I associate the song with is the same loss that wrote the lyrics to the song on a chalkboard for my door. Even as the chalk begins to fade, I can’t take it down. Taking it down feels like an acceptance of the loss and I don’t know that I’m ready for that.
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve hit my max on suppressing. There are things around me changing and as anyone knows, change involves a lot of feelings. For the last week or so, I’ve felt an unexplainable grief toward the loss of my friend. The kind of grief you feel deep in your chest, making you feel the need to sob uncontrollably while simultaneously making it feel hard to breathe. I don’t know what the trigger was for Alyssa specifically. One minute I was dicing carrots and the next I was in my husband’s arms gasping for breaths between sobs. It was a deep sadness. A thorough hurt. A sorrow like I hadn’t felt since the day I heard the news. Somewhere in there, there was anger that all of this was coming to the surface. I had just recovered from first time Kindergarten mom syndrome. I have cried more in the last two weeks than I’ve cried in the 28 years that I’ve been alive.
On one hand, it’s been such a relief to know that she made such an impact on my life that it’s taken me three years (so far) to move on. I’ve missed her presence so deeply in my life over the past few months. I’ve missed the laugh that I swear I still hear in restaurants sometimes. My head jerks in the general direction of the noise before I realize that it can’t be Alyssa’s laugh, but what a gift to hear a similar one. I miss dreaming together. I miss how easy it was to be her friend.
It’s been a rattling few days. I don’t even know that I have a true purpose for writing, other than acknowledging that it’s an outlet for my grief. Maybe to let you know that grief doesn’t have a time capsule. Maybe you grieve for a week, maybe you grieve for ten years. It’s whatever works for you. My heart graced me with getting out of the diaper phase of my life before the reality of what losing Alyssa really looked like for me settled in. Missing her lately has hurt so badly, but felt so freeing. Not because I feel like I can let her go, but because I still feel her period. Not in a “talk to ghosts, please seek medical attention immediately, Izzie Stevens” way. Not in a “I feel Alyssa here.” No. That’s weird. In a way that every time I pick up my camera, she comes to mind. All of the things we learned together over the years. In a way that sometimes when my daughter’s eyes light up, I think of the way Alyssa looked on the day she found out I was pregnant. In the way that sometimes I drive by a car that looked like hers and still get excited that it might be her before I realize how impossible it is.
I’m in a continual cycle of disbelief that this is even a part of my life and thankfulness for the time I had with her. I don’t allow myself to think about what life would look like if she were here, because it’s unfair to a slew of people, but man do I wish she was. I wish that she could hear how much Ella talks, or sing “The Sound of Music” with Adam. I wish that she could help me figure out my complicated living room and find a way to make it feel homey. I wish that she could pull me off of the couch and into better shape. I wish that I could sit with her and talk about all of the hard stuff and the changes that accompany raising kids. I wish that I could laugh with her at the expense of others. I wish for so many things. But mostly I just wish she was here and that I didn’t have to feel the weight of her loss.
As my friend Idina says, she’s like a handprint on my heart. I hate that it still stings so badly. Sometimes I feel like a crazy person that it still hurts so much. Sometimes I’m annoyed to know that she probably doesn’t think about me at all. Most of the time, I just miss her. For some reason over the past few days, unbearably so. I know this part will pass. Hopefully sooner than later, because my eyes burn and my nose is full of snot.
I don’t think there’s really a bright and shiny end for this blog. I keep thinking I’ll get to one eventually, but I just rabbit trail back into the same feelings and pondering if something is wrong with my temporal lobe for sending into this whirlwind of feelings over something I felt largely recovered from. But I think mostly that it’s human nature to long for comfort. And she was comfort for me. When my heart was overwhelmed with everything from negative pregnancy tests to a screaming toddler carrying around my positive pregnancy tests while I stared in disbelief. She was the safe place. I don’t visit her grave. I know there’s no real healing there for me. I would only be there to acknowledge what I have lost. Temporarily lost. Only for now, in this lifetime.
“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? I do believe I have been changed for the better. Because I knew you... because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
