Shattered Mirror

Imagine standing on a concrete floor holding a big, clear mirror in your hands. And then dropping it and watching it smash onto the floor. At first you try to pick up the big pieces. They are all you see at first. Big chunks of glass. Surely, with the right glue, this can be put back together.

But then you notice the shards. So many shards. Some that you can barely see, others that you don't know are there until you step on some invisible piece of glass that slices into your foot.

This is grief.

This is life after losing a spouse.

The mirror smashed the day G died. I woke up the next morning - or was it the next week?- and did what a person does on Sundays (during a pandemic). I put on a church service. But I shut it off. I couldn't handle it. The worship, the words that were not about my husband's death - it was all far too normal when I was standing in a pile of rubble.

But the pieces that I could see broken around me were the big ones. The biggest one being G is gone.

As time passed I began picking up more: I can't homeschool next year... I need to go back to work full time... How will we get groceries? What do I even like to eat?

Then there were the pieces of holidays and birthdays, the traditions that were forever changed. The new piece that got mixed in of visiting a grave and being most at peace in a graveyard.

I'm noticing more and more pieces. Tiny pieces that maybe no one else can see but they cut my feet and draw blood all the same. Relationships are changed. Holes are not filled. I am too tired. Grief brain remains.

The life we lived together has been shattered into a million pieces. The small ones hurting just as much as the big ones because each one reminds me of what has been lost.

I tried to hold on to the pieces. I tried to glue them back together. But things that have shattered can only be made into something different, something new. It's not better and it's definitely not the same.

How do I let go when these pieces are all that I have left? How do I let my life slowly wash away all the things that once connected me so strongly to G?

My counselor says I will find freedom when I let them go. When i stop trying to fit things back together. When I stop trying to preserve the relationships I had, or that G had. Because now these relationships are different, and some are gone. Now I am different. Now they are different.

"Make peace with reality", she tells me. But reality is a broken mirror. Shards of glass. Pieces of glass. fragments of glass. All of it a disaster. All of it broken. All of it gone. None of it repairable.

And Jesus? She reminded me that he stands with me in the rubble and weeps.