Healing a Heart
By Sara Barry
Tonight, the sky was a bruise of color to the west, but still, the light lingered, even as dinner got done later than planned. It made me smile, that blue sky and lingering sun glow. I noticed that the light was staying later about a week ago, startled to look at the clock at 5:30 and see blue sky out my window.
Since the shortest, darkest day in December, the days have been growing longer the light staying more each day. One minute or two, each day.
On December 23 or 31, or even January 30, this change wasn’t noticeable. But those minutes add up. So suddenly it’s light at 5:05, 5:23 5:41 . . . I should be starting dinner, and it’s still light. I hadn’t noticed the lengthening days. The light crept up on me. The return of hope and joy in grief can be like that too.
Grief is so dark, so heavy it’s easy to lose sight of changes in you. It’s easy to think you will never come back into the light or that you will see it, but it won’t last. Yes, the overall effect of grief easing takes far longer than the turn of light from December to late February, but like the light, the change is slow, imperceivable.
Until one day you notice that your breathing doesn’t tighten first thing every morning, that you’ve gone a whole week without bursting into tears, that you say your baby’s name with more ease, more lightness. It still hurts. But there is a shift that has been happening that you hadn’t even noticed.
Working through grief is hard, exhausting work. It’s trudging drudgery. Sometimes we don’t see the change because it’s subtle, imperceptible. And sometimes we are so bowed over, we fail to notice what is happening around us.
I remember finding a picture of myself, from several years after Henry died. I was smiling, which wasn’t new. I knew how to form my mouth into the right shape even soon after he died. But in this picture, the smile reached my eyes. Perhaps it had been edging up there, inching its way like the growing light, until it reached all the way into my eyes.
You don’t get over grief. You don’t get to the end of it. But you get through the darkest hours. The light returns, however slowly.
I saw the light tonight and even though the wind is still biting and my kitchen is a jumble of boots and snow pants and mittens, I can see the day coming when the bulky clothes will be packed away, when I’ll run outside barefoot, sink my hands into the ground. I see the day coming when I’ll start dinner too late because the light tricks me into letting us all play longer than we should. I see the day when the light will lengthen and I’ll almost forget how early and how deep the darkness had come.
What shifts have you felt in your grief?