Trying to control grief is like trying to choke a fish: it’s slippery so tightening my grip only lets it get away, and the fish doesn’t breathe air anyway, so why am I choking it?
The harder I try to control my grief, the more firmly it lets me know who’s master.
“You will feel this and you will feel it NOW,” Grief demands at the most inconvenient times. Grief also says, “You can forget about that to-do list; just grab the tissues.” And in its best impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grief mocks, “Don’t worry; I’ll be back.”
One way I’ve tried to subdue my grief is by keeping pictures and mementos of Dominic either out of my house or out of sight in my house.
I remember being afraid to even look at his pictures in the days immediately following his birth. The hospital social worker had taken some and printed them in her office for me to take home. I kept them in an envelope beside my bed, but I didn’t need them to remind me of him. He was my first thought every morning and my last thought every night. Some days, I would wake up and think I was still pregnant; the minute I remembered everything was pure devastation.
I didn’t want to look at his newborn pictures too often because I feared that was all he would become to me: a baby in a picture. While the memories of his feel, smell, and cries were still fresh on my senses, I wanted to conjure them without prompts. And I wanted to have control of when they arose.
While not having many physical reminders of Dominic in plain view does help control when he enters my mind, it is not foolproof. Sometimes I will be happily going about my day, when BAM! A flash of him crosses my view. Disoriented, I try to continue writing that email, washing the dishes or walking the dogs. Instead, I find myself trapped in a memory that appeared without permission.
I only recently began introducing pictures of him into my home. The Christmas card from Robby and Marie is framed and sits on the mantel over the fireplace. Prior to the beginning of summer, any other evidence that I have a child was stored either in folders on my digital devices or in a box, tucked away on a high closet shelf. I never even printed a picture of him until just last month. It now is also framed and on the mantel.
A glimpse of these photos can still lead to a memory, a smell, an image, a feeling. Suddenly, I may feel him against me, or remember the texture of his fine hair through my fingers, or hear him cracking himself up while he plays.
But what I’ve found is that more often than not, a picture of him makes me smile. His giddy grin now lights up the lock screen on my iPad, so I see it every time I sit down to write. On my fridge is a magnet picture of him being thrown into the air by Robby, his arms and legs spread wide with puffy clouds in the background.
Dom’s pictures do sometimes provoke tears, but I’ve learned that grief will come when it pleases, with or without my help. And his cute face is just too much to hide in a closet.
Have you ever tried to control your grief? What did you do? How did it work out for you? I love your comments! Leave a reply in the comment box below.
