Push

I woke up this morning feeling completely overwhelmed by my sadness. I don’t know why, but I guess one of the things I have learned about this thing they call grief is that it doesn’t matter why. I had thought at one point that if I could identify what things triggered the onset of deeply sad moments and days, then maybe I could either prevent them or at least be prepared for them. But grief does not allow such luxuries. Its whims are its own.

Yesterday evening we had some friends over for dinner for the first time since Hudson died. We spent the day running errands, preparing food, straightening up the house. After they left last night, I realized that I had spent most of the day in a fog. I was quite literally just going through motions without any real sense of doing anything at all. I talked at the appropriate times, read recipes and prepared them correctly, served dinner, and was fairly good company, I think. But I don’t think I was really even there.

As part of our errands yesterday, we went to Costco for only about the second or third time since Hudson died. Costco was another regular outing with her, and I rarely came out of there without a new outfit of some sort for her (at $5 a pop, it is hard to resist). Ed and I were just wandering around, up and down the aisles, and before I knew it, I was crying, right in the middle of the effing Costco.

It’s incredible how pervasive the grief can be—no matter how much you try to push it away, aside, off, back, behind you, it is always, always there, just one fraction of a millimeter below the surface waiting to push you right back.

Just this second as I was sitting here writing this, and thinking what to name this post, the word “Push” came to mind, as I thought of this constant push back and forth between me and my grief. And out of nowhere, in the midst of this sadness, my One Good Thing pushed itself to the forefront. Sarah McLachlan’s song, Push, is Ed’s and my song. One day, about four months after we started dating, we were on our way home from a trip to the mountains, and Push came on the CD we were listening to. I’d never heard it before, but Ed said it always made him think of me. Once I listened to it, and ever since then, I have always thought it is much more fitting the other way around—it always makes me think of him. We danced to it at our wedding.

This morning in bed, when I started to cry, then sob, Ed put his arms around me and just sat with me until the heaviest sadness began to subside. Although it pains me deeply to know that grief will be my constant companion for the rest of my life, it brings me solace, hope, and joy to know that Ed will be, too.


Push

Every time I look at you the world just melts away
All my troubles all my fears dissolve in your affections
You've seen me at my weakest but you take me as I am
And when I fall you offer me a softer place to land

I get mad so easy but you give me room to breathe
No matter what I say or do 'cause you're too good to fight about it
Even when I have to push just to see how far you'll go
You won’t stoop down to battle but you never turn to go

Your love is just the antidote when nothing else will cure me
There are times I can’t decide when I can’t tell up from down
You make me feel less crazy when otherwise I'd drown
But you pick me up and brush me off and tell me I'm OK
Sometimes that’s just what we need to get us through the day

You stay the course you hold the line you keep it all together
You're the one true thing I know I can believe in
You're all the things that I desire, you save me, you complete me
You're the one true thing I know I can believe in