If I’ve learned anything about grief so far it’s that each day brings a new feeling, a new challenge, perhaps a little resolve if I’m lucky (although just as easily, I can lose some peace I thought I had gained). I can’t tell how I’m going to feel tomorrow or even this evening. All it takes is a memory trigger–a song we shared, passing by a restaurant we enjoyed, seeing a photo–and I can be racing down Misery Road. My physical condition can also shove me toward despair. If I haven’t slept well or if my body is aching, I’m less able to keep the grief in lock-down.

Just as strangely, I have had days when I wake up and for awhile anyway, I feel almost normal. Or at least my “new normal,” which is a much flatter, shorter-on-the-joy-spectrum experience of life. Some days, I find myself beginning to consider plans for the future, thinking about possibly taking an herbal medicine class or learning to play the guitar. I let myself imagine retiring and waking up in the morning not having to race out the door to work. I actually let myself experience for a moment what that attitude of relaxed being would feel like. This is new. I didn’t, couldn’t conjure any picture of the future a month or two ago. There just wasn’t anything but darkness. But while there now appear to be pinpricks of light, what has “remained” (ironic, really) within me is a vacant lack of desire. While I may want to be rid of something that’s part of my current life, I don’t want anything new added. Although I might consider taking a class or trying a new hobby, my mind’s default answer is, “Why bother?”

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I’ve heard well-intending friends and family members try to “fix” my grief with suggestions such as finding a cause to support or volunteering to help others (to take my mind off my own problems). I know some people who’ve worked through their grief this way by pouring their energy into something they want to change, correct, or create. More power to them! For me, my lack of desire has to work itself out before I can invest myself in anything. I don’t need or want a distraction. Nor do I believe that any distraction could possibly heal the pain of losing my daughter. I don’t really believe that time heals grief either. I just think that over time I’ll adjust to this new life that Jessica’s death created. I can feel that adjustment beginning, but right now, it feels more like resignation than embracing a change. I’m hoping that somewhere, sometime I’ll actually want something new in my life, that I’ll set and attain goals, with the resultant satisfaction of having achieved a dream. But I don’t think that dreams or desires are possible until the wound of losing what I have loved is scarred over enough to bear the possibility of reinvestment of myself and potential further loss. If and until that time comes, I’m grateful that I can simply stand back in my safe space and acknowledge the beauty that still exists out there in the world, a world that refused to shrivel up and die along with me and my old life.