Healing a Heart
By Sara Barry
You know grief isn’t linear. But what shape, what path does it follow?
For me, grief has been a spiral. I come round and round through the months and seasons, again and again and again.
Each spring, as I prep my garden, I flashback to a very pregnant me. I squat, bent over belly, and plant seeds. Lettuce. Carrots. Hope.
Each summer, early August, I sit in the late afternoon glow, turning the world golden and remember the golden weeks when we thought Henry was better. His heart had been fixed, and ours started to heal over the wounds of fear.
And each year, as we get ready for the school bus to stop in front of our house for the first day of school, I remember sitting with Henry on our neighbor’s first day. I remember waiting for it, lost and broken, that first September I knew he would never ride the school bus.
I come back round to the distraction of a new baby the following year.
The ravenous hunger of another pregnancy after that.
Chasing one, holding one, missing one.
Waiting for his turn that would never come.
Smiling as his sister climbed the bus steps for the first time.
This year, I’ll put my youngest on the bus.
We’re counting down the days. And I’m here, back thinking about the bus as I do each year as August turns to September. I started writing this post and had a sense of déja vu, because I wrote about missed milestones already.
But we’re here again. I’m getting ready to send my daughters to 2nd grade and kindergarten. And Henry would be starting 4th grade. I updated a few numbers from last year’s , but has anything else really changed?
It has. Each time I spiral back round, the experience changes. In the first years, I relived a lot of moments. Then moved to remembering.
Now, it’s not so much revisiting the past as growing onto it. Each fall is that fall we waited on the porch and the one when Henry should have gotten on the bus and the one when his sister did. And the one right now, where we’re anticipating my little one going on the bus for her first time.
On the first day of school, I’ll turn off the memory lamp by Henry’s picture as I go to turn on the coffee. I may pause and look closely at that moment of him captured in time or I may bustle past trying to get everyone ready. Either way he’ll be with me when we wait for the bus, caught in a chamber of the spiral. I can be fully present with the milestone unfolding while holding the hoped for milestone and the missed milestone and the previous milestones.
And next year, I’ll wait again for the bus.
Do you spiral back to the same events? How have things changed from this time last year (or 2 years or 5 years ago) to this time this year?