It seems that I have been talking to death regularly now in my life. I’m trying hard to understand if there is a new way to relate to it. Last week my husband was in a 6 car pile up on an icy overpass bridge, where he walked away with minor injuries while his colleague Angela died at the scene. This naturally has been a mixed river of emotions from shock, sadness, relief, overwhelm, gratitude, fear, heartache, love, acceptance.. all depending on the moment.
I didn’t know Angela, but my heart is extended to her children, husband and family – especially because I have been through the experience of being on the receiving end of that type of a phone call. And, I am also aware that this experience has brought many lessons, one of which was about my sense of security and willingness to experience life fully.
The week after the crash, I felt my footing in life to be gone. I was reminded how I had fallen back into that false sense that life was going to deliver at a minimum some things I expected. Things like living a life at least X years long, growing old with my husband, seeing my daughters grow up and mature…etc. We all have these dreams and expectations inside of some shape and form. The accident also highlighted that I wanted to live out these dreams fully present and joyfully. As I was aware of how un-guaranteed these things are, I just longed for security again.
This showed up in a physical way for me. I found myself lost in the car one day in Burbank and I had lost my ear piece to my cell phone, my car was running out of gas, I was late getting home… and all I wanted was a familiar route home. I felt unglued. I did make it to a gas station and get home in the nick of time for an important event, but what was more important was that I saw how my human side wanted desperately to avoid the unfamiliar.
Then, it became so clear to me that I must step into the unfamiliar over and over if I was to get out of life the full experience I wanted. Otherwise I would clearly get more of what I have gotten in the past, by doing what was comfortable. It reminded me what I’ve heard about brain development – that in order to develop new neural networks and expand our capacity, we must do things differently and in new ways. If we do the familiar, it is just like retracing the current pathways in the brain or like re-running a computer program. It simply won’t product new results without new input.
This was a perfect reminder that in moving into a new year, my willingness to grow is dependent upon my willingness to be in unfamiliar territory and to trust this thing we call life. Sometimes it is a shocking turn of event we face that brings the unfamiliar, but we can also choose it to stop the monotony or routine we have and create something different, something new and perhaps even something profound.
Walking Through Grief 