Here’s one super crummy aspect of grief – it interrupts our life at the most unsuspecting times and in the most unexpected ways.

It catches us off guard and completely ill prepared for the hailstorm of emotions that follow. It stomps around in your world, and on your heart, and it doesn’t give a rat’s ass how you feel or what its interrupting. It comes when it wants and you are helpless to defend yourself against the attack, and the Holiday’s seem to provide the perfect time for this to occur.

As I talked about in my first blog, the unpacking of Christmas decorations can bring grief to the center of our hearts. Seeing certain ornaments or hearing a song can push you over the brink (when you had no idea you were even near the edge).

Christmas Eve morning of 2016 was one of those days for me.

It had been 18 days since Don had died. I sat on my couch with a cup of coffee, my phone in hand, and mindlessly opened FB. I was not prepared to see the memory that popped up, or experience the surge of emotions that flooded over me as I sat staring at a picture of Don and me on Christmas Eve the year before.

We were standing in front of a Christmas tree at church and smiling – and as I looked at that picture – I was filled with a mixture of emotions – but for a moment – I was simply numb. It was as if my mind and heart were having a conference call to decide how they were going to handle this moment – and evidently, the unanimous decision was that I was going to come undone.

I felt the grief quickly rising up in my body and within seconds I was sobbing. Not just crying. This was an immediate explosion of burning tears, gasps for breath, and sounds that can only be described as guttural, and that those who have experienced deep grief understand immediately.

And with each sob, my body tightened and folded me forward.

I was no longer in control – grief had taken over and was routing my emotions, and my entire body was in full surrender to its commands.

It was evident that this was not going to be a short-lived interruption – this was a full-on grief attack. This was lamenting without the ashes and sackcloth.

I got off the couch and clumsily stumbled to my room, grabbed a picture off my nightstand of me and Don, and then fell into my bed and wept.

As I pressed that picture to my chest, I fell apart. I curled my entire body around it like it was a ball, and with such intensity, I’m surprised I wasn’t bruised later.

As I held onto our picture, I could feel sorrow penetrate every part of my body and I physically hurt.

I was experiencing the kind of grief that is so consuming, so cavernous, you wish you could pass out and find some momentary relief from it, but which never seems to occur, and so instead – I laid there in a state of what felt like unending agony.

I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I just wanted to stay there and be raptured to heaven to escape the torment of living.

Like I said earlier, it was Christmas Eve, and as I lay in bed, I realized I hadn’t decided whether or not I was going to go to church for the Christmas Eve service.

I considered going versus staying home, and the subsequent emotional landslide I would likely experience with each choice, and neither really seemed like a win for me. For a while, the thought of staying in bed and waiting to die, still seemed like an acceptable possibility.

As almost every grieving person knows, making decisions is exhausting and to trying to do so when worn out and in a grief attack, is almost impossible.

After agonizing over whether or not I would attend the service, I finally decided I would – and yes – it was horrible. I cried from the beginning to the end. My shoulders shook, tears streamed down my face and snot dripped from my nose. But I was with people I loved and people who loved me and Don – and even amidst the pain – there was a connection to the past that was comforting.

As we held up our candles and sang Silent Night, I looked around the room and I thought about Don.

I thought about how much he loved this part of the service, and then I thought about heaven – and I wondered what it must be like to sing that song in front of the very one it was written about – and for a moment – it was beautiful.

Even my heartache seemed to have a place within the beauty, and grief finally relinquished its control. It was almost like it ceded to the tranquility and holiness that this occasion was due – and in reverence bowed its head.

As I look back, I remember lying in bed on that awful day and reminding myself that these feelings wouldn’t always be so sharp.

How did I know that?

Because I’d been down this path 10 years earlier when I lost Greg.

I have a knowing that seems almost unfair at times.

I knew that over time, attending to my grief would not require the same kind of focus it demanded in those early stages of loss, and in some odd way, that was comforting to me.

I knew that these grief interruptions would never stop, but that they wouldn’t always be so acrid and vile.

I don’t want to say that grief necessarily softens, but as time moves forward and we are forced to amble along with it, the frequency that it visits, subsides – and I say this as one who has had her heart taken apart and reassembled numerous times.

Whether you’re in the early days of your grief journey, or you are over a decade out, know that there are other people who understand how devastating these interruptions can be – especially during the holidays. And sometimes just knowing we aren’t alone, and that times of celebration can be filled with unforeseen landmines, can be a comfort.

May you be reminded that you are not alone and that your pain is real – and when you fall apart for seemingly no reason – those of us who have been there understand.

Today, seven years after writing this, my life is in a very different space. I regularly experience joy and hope, and the days of unrelenting sorrow no longer occupy the majority of my life. Do I still experience these grief interruptions and attack? Absolutely – and I will until the day I die.

But I’ve never forgotten what it was like to feel the way I did in the days, weeks and months following Greg and Don’s deaths, and in a way to walk with those going through the same thing, I created an Organization that provides a place to be seen, heard and validated; as well as creating a community with those who truly understand this sorrow, first hand. We offer resources, social opportunities and we have members who are living their best life, in spite of already living their worst days – and they serve as an example of how resilient we actually are.

People ask me all the time why I spend so much time with widows, even though I’m remarried, and my answer is because “I want to provide what I didn’t have, and to provide normalcy to those who feel anything but normal and who doubt life can ever be anything but heartbreakingly painful.”

My pain will always be a part of me. I will always be a double widow. However, if I can offer hope, if I can be a light to someone in their darkest days, if I can show another person how to rebuild their life – I will.

I also spend time with other widow’s because there is something about being with those who understand that even sixteen plus years out, I still navigate a complicated world of loss and happiness.

There are moments that non-widowed people see as only happy and wonderful – but that my widowed friends intuitively understand are also laced with a heart piercing pain that is invisible to most who have never experienced this type of loss.

When we are together, there is usually a lot of laughter and guffawing, and most of the conversations have nothing to do with death or grief. But when one of us is celebrating the birth of their first grandchild, who was born on their late grandfather’s birthday – we celebrate and cheer – but we also hold a reverence that this is a hard day because her husband, her son’s father and this new baby’s grandpa – should be here. But instead, Grandpa will be a name, pictures and stories of who he was. And while this baby will ‘know about’ his grandpa – he will never be able to really ‘know’ him. He will never know the feel of being held in his arms. He will never get to run into his arms yelling, “GRANDPA!!!” And her son won’t have his dad to call and ask him questions regarding being a new dad.

So while there is exquisite joy, there is also sadness, and the fact that most people don’t realize widowed people are bearing up under this reality only adds to the weight they carry, and contributes to feeling misunderstood by society. It forces them to hold their pain close to their chest for fear of hearing, “But can’t you just focus on ______?” And the answers is no – no they can’t just focus on the joy, because the other side of that coin is as real as their happiness. They co-exist.

And this is why I do what I do, why I still write about grief and why I spend times with those who have experienced the same searing loss I have – because we understand one another and it gives MY sorrow a place to be seen and understood.

I understand the grief attacks, the grief interruptions and the way we learn to walk alongside grief and joy. And it’s nice to be with those who don’t have to have any of this explained. It’s not because I’m living in the past, it’s actually because I am fully immersed in my present and future. But grief changes you. I am not who I was when Greg died, and I changed again after Don died. And those changes continue to shape the person I am today.

I wish I never knew what I do about loss – but I will not keep what I’ve learned hidden away. Instead, I will share it and offer my experiences to anyone interested to ask, because feeling alone and isolated is an unfortunate aspect of being widowed, and if I help one person – my loss and growth have been worth the journey.

So, pardon the interruption as I share a memory and how it has shaped me – and subsequently helped others who experience the same crappy aspects of grief I have – along with the growth that empowers us in ways we’d never have expected.

We learn that we are warriors – and that is a huge leap from feeling like the world has defeated us, and that we will live in isolation and carry heavy sorrow everyday we try to carve out a life without our person.

Today, when I stand and sing Silent Night, I’m not broken apart like I have been, but I still shed tears because it was a sacred moment I shared with both my late husbands. When we raise the candles, and I look around the room, I’m not consumed with darkness – instead I see light. I see the light of hope. I see the light that guided me out of my darkest days, and I see a way to be a light to others who are experiencing the heaviest pain a human can bear. And much like on Christmas Eve of 2016, grief cedes to the holiness of the moment, and in reverence bows it’s head, and honors all who hold up a light for others who are in the dark.

As always, I wish you peace and love, from my re-assembled heart to yours.