I'm learning to hunker down as the storm approaches

And so I hunker down. It sounds so dramatic: hunker down. Like there’s a storm coming. For me, there is.

My Mom, a kind, loving woman from a different generation, powers through her grief with a stiff upper lip. Stoic. Buries pain. Grieves in private. You’re only sad if you make yourself sad.

Maybe. But maybe not. Because I’m not her. In many ways, I’ve sought to emulate her but, on this, I will always be a polar opposite.

Grief, for me, needs to be acknowledged as having a place at my table. Now and always. Unwelcome? At the beginning. But permanent so I may as well embrace its presence and learn to live with it my way.

I don’t want to be like generations of ancestors who tuck away memories and moments. My days of public grieving with tears are gone (maybe) but my days of recalling poignant memories are not. 

Will the passage of time soften the need to remember and mark the day? Perhaps. Or perhaps mark Aug. 10, the day My Favourite Husband (MFH) died, differently. But that’s “some day” and right now is right now.

After MFH died and I was navigating my life and my grief, one of the biggest things I needed to figure out was how I wanted it to look. How I needed it to look. What was right for me. And with apologies to my Mom and generations of stiff-upper-lipped ancestors, I decided to do widowhood my way. That includes laughter and humour. That includes a path forward. That includes building a life that feels right to me. 

And that includes grieving and remembering out loud. 

There are two former work colleagues who have both lost children. Although they are very different women and their children died years apart under very different circumstances, they have both chosen to remember in a similar manner. I had watched from afar, before death took MFH, and admired how they chose to remember. And when MFH passed, it was their examples I followed.

Something good and beautiful could come from something hard, something sad. Both of them, throughout the year but especially on dates that hit hard, do random acts of kindness in memory of their loved ones. It’s a beautiful tribute, an incredible legacy. One that speaks to my heart. And one that I follow. A reminder, if you will, that love lives on.

My previous posts make clear the days leading up to Aug. 10 are hard. I know how to take care of myself — or I think I do — but in addition to myself doing random acts of kindness, I’m encouraging others to put some love out into the world. Anything that speaks to them: a blood donation, buying a stranger a coffee, a meal. Donating clothes. Whatever love that has found its way to you giving some of it back. 

If there’s room for random acts of hate in the world, surely there’s room for random acts of love and kindness.

Will it help ease my heart? I think so. I'm at a point in my grief where the memories I recall first are not the memories of getting a phone call at 1 a.m. from an emergency department doctor telling me MFH had died. Aug. 10, though, that’s when I think of everything that was the beginning of the end — the end of my chapter to date and the beginning of my life now. 

And it hurts. 

That’s why the love that I and others do to make someone smile makes the hurt just a little less. Maybe I’m being selfish engaging others to help me get through this time by asking for this help. But I try not to ask for much and isn’t better to give than receive? 

With that in mind, I’ll keep pushing through future Aug. 10s knowing that they have more sunshine and blue skies than clouds because that’s how I choose to grieve. That's how I choose to love.