Managing

Life is full of thing to manage: time, weight, fitness, money, responsibilities, and even relationships sometimes. Managing grief, however is the toughest. It sits the heaviest, bearing down, as my mother would have said, “like a ton of bricks!”

It’s been eight months today. I’m managing. We’re managing. It is not very easy some days. And why? It’s because there’s a void. Your smile, your laughter, your humor, your bliss are all absent now. Just memories. “It’s a new normal,” friends say sincerely in an effort to empathize. It is. I get that. We understand.

The problem is, though, that we simply miss you. You are my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. Maybe that will change in time. I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet.

We are not the only ones managing our sadness today. I’m aware of that. On the 24^th of each month several folks I know are faced with an anniversary of sorts that tugs on their heartstrings. An exact day is superfluous though because anyone who has grieved on any day has been challenged to manage, to cope. It sometimes isn’t pretty. We sometimes stumble a bit, but all the same, we get by. It’s a gift I suppose to have that ability. To go on, to move forward, to laugh and smile again, is what our loved ones would want. I’m managing; we’re managing, although, in all honesty, at times it’s at a snail’s pace.

This is just what’s on my mind this morning.