Surf’s up
I went to the park with Loca and Heidi this morning and my head was booming from this allergy or cold or whatever that I caught yesterday and can’t seem to shake. I ran into a fellow dog walker and she said to me that she had just found out yesterday she has been furloughed from her job (read: laid off). We walked together and talked and she told me that she would okay, she’s nearing retirement and had a little money from her mother’s inheritance. She asked how my mom was doing because we haven’t really spoken since late last year, only passing each other in the park recently. I said she died at the end of November and that I can’t even talk about it because I’ve been riding a new wave of grief as I’ve been dealing with her grave.
She said her mother had passed years ago and she still cries. “Both of my parents are gone. When my dad died it was hard, but my mother, well, I still can’t get over it. As a matter of fact,” she said as we were passing a monument marker in the park, “I still cry over MK (her dog). She used to always pee right there by that marker. And I swear the first year anniversary of her death I came to the park that morning and a little yellow flower was blooming in the very spot.”
Grief is a funny thing – there is no prescribed time to say “done, grief’s over” and sometimes you just have to surf the blue waves as they come knowing that life does go on, and time does help, and that flowers bloom in nitrogen heavy soil.