March 1, 2017 | The face of grief is as different and individual as the griever. How we choose to grieve may be singular, but it need not be solitary.
I have heard it said that we are not bodies who house a spirit. We are spirits who inhabit a body for a time. I believe this to be true. We are spirits, eternal spirits, first and foremost.
But how do we remind our arms and our hands and our hearts and our eyes when someone we love dies and suddenly we don't have the physical attachment to their spirit anymore?
We cannot wrap them in our arms. We cannot cradle their hands in our own. We cannot see the sun in their smile or the moonlight in their eyes.
We all grieve differently. The face of grief is as different and individual as the griever. How we choose to grieve may be singular, but it need not be solitary. For me, the belief that a loved one's spirit lives on is crucial to finding a way to carry on, but it gives little comfort in those first years of emptiness.
The milestones become important as we mark the separation from their spirit. The milestones are a tangible way to keep the connection. The anniversaries of their birth and death, the last words we spoke, our favorite place, their burial site, become milestones. Anchors. My mom died the day after Mother's Day. My dad died the day after my daughter's birthday. Those associations link the milestones in my memory.
A family in our neighborhood lost their beautiful son, River, last year on February 29th. Leap Day. Leap Day will forever be linked to River for all of us who beheld the boy with golden hair and sky-blue eyes, the earthly shell his spirit encompassed on his short journey to earth. He leaped to earth. He leaped into the hearts of his family. And just as quickly, he leaped to Heaven. What happens to their anchor, their milestone, when the calendar steals so many of them away?
I grew up in one home. I went to the same schools with the same classmates. One of those classmates was a girl who was born on February 29th. Each year, our teacher would let her choose when to celebrate. When she got older, she jokingly told us how old she was by only counting the Leap Years of her life.
That won't work for River's family. Grief doesn't let you choose. Grief doesn't let you skip ahead. River's family members need an anchor, a milestone to mark the years their arms and hearts have been aching for him. They deserve an anchor.
If King's Cross Station can have Track 9 3/4, and Sirius Black can have a home squeezed into the middle of the block, then I think River's family deserves a February 29th on the calendar each year. From this point on, I'll be drawing a line down February 28th and another down March 1st, to create room for River's Leap Day. I'm wedging it in there. I'm making room. Because River and his family deserve an anchor.
As River's family learns how to push forward through the heartache of their separation from his tangible human shell, I hope and pray they can find comfort in the milestones, and comfort in recognizing his continued spirit in their lives. Someday, in Heaven, I can imagine the glint in River's eyes as he counts up their time of separation in leap years.
How we choose to grieve may be singular, but it need not be solitary.
I pray River's family can feel how loved they are. I pray River's family can feel how tightly tethered River's spirit is to theirs until they can sweep him up in their arms again.
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