SURVIVE

Frida Kahlo, my muse in pain, grief and survival

“But who is going to take care of us now?” Miguel asked my mother hugging her goodbye before my parents set off on their long drive home. After two weeks of guests, AKA caretakers, and in your face grieving, we are once again on our own. Grateful doesn’t come close to encompassing how lifted up we felt by our family, friends and even strangers as we remembered Adelaide on the anniversary of her passing and celebrated her on her birthday. What. A. Year.

Truth be told, I feel relieved that these two momentous anniversaries are behind us along with the entire year of “firsts”. I’m pretty sure the second time around the sun without Adelaide will still suck but maybe it will be just a tiny less sucky. And yes, I just used the word ‘sucky’ because, you know what? It felt right. Which is basically how I survived the last year: by doing what felt right, right now. But I can’t live that way forever, well maybe I could, but our laundry pile says otherwise and also, deep down I don’t want to. 

Recently, I was having a particularly dark day. The anxiety would not release from my chest and the depression hung heavy. It was hard for me to see the path forward, to imagine a time when this pain and grief were not all consuming. In my emotional state, I probably shouldn’t have been driving but we only have one car and Miguel was going to be out for the day and I didn’t want to be left stranded. Driving home, after dropping off Miguel, I noticed a mural that had been painted on the side of a building. It read “SURVIVE”.

Not survived.

Not survivor.

Just, survive.

That one word resonated in every cell of my body.

In a month where I survived the anniversaries of my daughter’s passing and her birthday, in no way do I feel like a survivor. Instead, I am continuously working on surviving. In some ways I think living with intense grief must be a bit like being an addict. No one is ever a recovered addict, they are always in recovery, no matter how many years it’s been since their last bender. Yet, at the end of the day, we strive to survive.

For me the tricky part comes with reconciling those days when simply surviving is to be celebrated, with those where I actually feel alright and want to do more than survive. At my core, I am a do-er: I need a purpose to fulfill and goals to achieve. But grief had buried my ambition. Thankfully, I’ve learned that ambition doesn’t die - it can lay dormant for awhile - but it doesn’t die and I started to feel mine calling out for me this week. It’s going to be a long process to get back to Adelaide-level determination and currently I feel like I’m excavating a lost treasure with only a teacup, but we work with what we have.

This year so many of us are just doing the best we can with the limited bandwidth we have left. I would venture to guess that many of us have had to bury some part of our innate selves to survive. I’m ready to start digging though, even if it’s just a teacup at a time, and even if I have to take a lot of naps, err, breaks along the way. Today we survive. Someday soon though, we will thrive.