This Friday will mark a year, and yet today it feels as if it could have been yesterday. Coming out of the fog of loss takes time…sometimes a lot of time. When you realize it is taking time, its easy to tell yourself that you are not going to make it, that you are not doing well. Its hard to see brighter days. Its hard to know you will ever be ok when you find yourself so deep in the darkness. When their memory is so real their shadow is just leaving the room. Their scent is in the steam of the shower. It feels as though you just shared dinner last week. The sense of normalcy and security in the possibility the phone could ring and it be them at any moment.

So real, and yet so surreal.

Its not my life, who’s life is this, how did I get here, when can I go home?

Why? Why? WHYYYYY???????

The cycle of grief is vicious. It can take you for a ride. The people with the notebooks and clipboards tell you there are stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Not necessarily in this order. They are right. What they aren’t always forthcoming about is how quickly and insanely the loop de loops will spin you between these feelings. How plunging the pits of depression can be. How extensive the denial and bargaining can get. How the anger is lying just under the surface of most daily functions and conversations. How terrifying the whole experience is at times. Riding in the front seat of your life, feeling out of control.

Getting off the ride is not easy. The goal: acceptance. The nightmare: acceptance. How do you win at this game?

You quit playing.

Acceptance is not something you can have if you want it. Its something you will gain when you have given up trying to fight your life. We don’t give up easily. We can’t. Our mind wants us to stay in the safe zone. But we cannot move until we allow ourselves to quiet. Quiet the panic. Quiet the despair. Quiet the longing, the self loathing, the self destructive behavior. Quiet the spirit of the enemy that wants to continue to destroy us. Finding quiet will slow the ride and allow us to feel the breeze and see the view. But finding quiet is a struggle. The world we live in is full of noise. Its all around us and in us at all times. The television, the phone, the washing machine, the sink, the kids, the cars, the traffic, the wind, the rain, the thoughts, the self talk, the heart beating relentlessly.

So. Much. Noise.

The distraction of noise can save us from our quiet. Quiet can be scary. But the quiet is what will give us a place to bring our breath, our worry, our loose cannons.

As I sat in my house on this January morning, snow and ice covering the surfaces as slick as skating rinks outside my doors, the wind was gusting and howling with a force that seemed it may actually blow the house down. When did these winds get so strong, so crazy, so reflective of the storm of anxious waiting in my guts for a new life to begin? The quiet is hard to find today. And the distance from this hurricane to the calm sunshine and songs of birds in June seems like an eternity. But what I know, from the swiftness of the events of this last year, is that it will be but a blink of an eye before the boys are running wildly free through the rain of sprinklers. Only a moment before they will be drenching their faces and chests in colorful streams of popsicle juice as they warm their wet bodies on the sunny deck. It will be but a second before we are seeing another year go by. Time marches forward with or without us and even as we experience life, we are lost in the speed of its passing.

I was caught up in the speed of life before time blurred. No matter what we went through, we shared our life’s boat. And every moment of every day was a true gift. I could turn to him and lean on him whenever I needed and he could and did the same. And then I found myself riding alone in a leaky boat, the motor was shot and I was without a paddle. I looked around me and I felt like no one saw me sinking. No one understood. They wanted me to be done, to breathe again. They still want that and I want that too. Yet, I am drowning and the air is difficult to take in. The water is high, the bottom is deep. And now I have lost my boat completely.

There is no better time to find the quiet then now. The problems of today will quickly become yesterdays burden to carry. I can leave some of them here in yesterday, I can. Maybe not all of them, maybe not today. But I can take off the chain mail of todays fear and obligation and leave it in yesterdays hands. I can quiet. I can calm. I can breathe, release, and remember there is no love more needed than the love I show to myself. A hard concept for me, a person who regularly struggles to give themselves any grace.

So today I will quiet myself, I will take in the air. I will clear my mind of the thoughts, my thoughts, which get wildly out of hand with unconfirmed expectations and judgements. I will ask yesterday to carry the burdens of what people want me to do, what I think they want. And I will put my head down and swim. Swim toward the shore where the water gets shallow, the waves dwindle and I can begin to just float. I will find myself some peace in this feeling, some quiet, and I will think about building a new boat.