The other day my brother posted a note on Facebook about how lately he has been missing both of our parents. Our father died in September 2010 and our mother in May of 1995. For many years after my mother died I noticed what I call “seasonal sadness,” that every year in early spring I would hit a period of inexplicable, intense sadness. I’m not sure when it finally occurred to me that I was experiencing recurrent grieving, that my body knew what was happening even if my mind couldn’t make sense of it. My “mommy cells” were waking up. I associated the late winter and early spring months with my mother’s diagnosis, illness, treatment, and death, and every year for many years the sadness would “sneak up” on me all over again.
It had actually started getting better; as the years passed and the pain of my mother’s loss eased a bit, the impact of the mommy cells on my overall sense of emotional wellbeing diminished. Then in late winter early spring of 2011 I suffered another series of significant losses: a relationship in January, my job in March, and my home in May. So recently when I found myself wondering about why I’d been feeling so sad lately, I realized that once again recurrent grief has returned, the only difference is the source of the grief.
I am grateful this evening for clarity. Sometimes the answers to what baffles us is literally right in front of us, hidden, as they say, in plain sight. I have been wondering about the sadness I’ve been experiencing. “Uh-oh,” I’d said to myself, “maybe you’re depressed.” Having suffered with depression on and off for much of my life, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea that perhaps it was “coming back.” In thinking about it over the past few weeks I kept returning to the notion that this didn’t feel like depression, it felt like sadness. And then, it came to me–I am grieving…again.
It feels odd to be sitting here grinning at the idea that I am grieving, but I am indeed grinning (perhaps I’m delirious, but I don’t think so.) I am smiling for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I once again missed the big neon sign pointing me to the source of my previously inexplicable sadness. I’d generally rather know what I’m dealing with than be stumbling around in the dark. So while I can’t tell if these are still my mommy cells or if the sadness is related to the more recent losses is less relevant. What matters is that the grief is real and while I had already been extending compassion and lovingkindness to my sorrow-filled, hurting self, I can offer even greater comfort now that I know what I’m dealing with.
We all mark certain occasions in various ways–we have anniversaries, birthdays, last days, and so many milestones along the way. Those experiences are–I believe–encoded in our DNA somehow, where they lie dormant for a time until something wakes them up. My body and subconscious always seems to know long before my conscious mind is aware of the awakening, and I find myself weeping and not knowing why. I am coming up on one of those difficult anniversaries on March 17. I’ll probably write about it on Sunday when that day arrives. But in the meantime I will rest tonight exhaling in gratitude at having arrived at the understanding of the origins of my sadness. Tomorrow I might be weeping again, but at least I’ll be ready for it, and for that I am grateful indeed.
