Aches

I’ve started reading a book called Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman. Normally I’m not a fan of prescriptive books on grief – books that tell you how to grieve, when to grieve, and give you the ten easy steps for moving past your grief. So I was skeptical at first when I read the title, but pleasantly surprised when I started reading the meditations: they’re short, direct and full of deep truth. Martha lost her 16-year-old daughter in an accident, and she writes out of her own pain. Every day I get to hear from someone who understands what the death of a loved one feels like, and it’s comforting.

Today she quotes from Caitlin Thomas: “Every bone in my body aches individually with a dragging weariness of pain, and the joints cry aloud for a warm balm.”

The minute before I read this, I was thinking, “I’m really tired. I hope I can just sleep in tomorrow and truly rest.” But Caitlin Thomas says it better: “Every bone in my body aches individually with a dragging weariness of pain…”

Some days it’s easy to forget the ache, the weariness. Some days I’m distracted by work, or moving from one thing on my to do list to another. Some days I’m distracted by hangouts with friends, or all the things I want to make (bread, deodorant, a skirt). But when I really pause, when I really stop, I notice the ache. I feel the weariness.

Martha goes on to quote her son, soon after her daughter died. He said, “It’ll take time, but we’ll feel good again.”

In my head I know this. I know that someday the shadow I’ve been living under, the pain that’s been so constant, will almost disappear. Someday I’ll feel good again.

But I can’t imagine when that day will come. I can’t picture what that day will look like. And in my heart I don’t fully believe its true. I’ve been sitting in this shadow for so long, I’ve been so used to this constant pain that I truly can’t remember what life looked like without it, and I’m a little scared to find out. This ache might not be pleasant, but at least it’s reliable!

And yet I hope. I hope for that balm for my aching joints. I hope that I’ll feel better again. And tonight I hope for the simple (and sometimes not so simple) gift of rest.