The Aftermath of Grief
Posted by Rebecca Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:31:00 GMT
One of the difficult things about leaving town to go to a funeral and visit with your family is getting your brain back in gear when you return.
Yesterday was very hard. I had the day off from work but had to ride the bus down to campus anyway to take an exam, an exam for which I felt completely unprepared. (Dang, check out that grammar!)
I remember that my eyes couldn’t focus on anything so I ended up staring blankly at the sky while memories rolled around in my head like loose marbles. Or maybe that was just my brain.
I was able to focus pretty well on the test. The memories were only whispering to me then. But the second I left the classroom, they began to scream, shrieking like banshees.
I slept a lot yesterday afternoon, and spent a little time looking at pictures while my eyes teared.
Today is better. I’m not so teary and edgy. The hard part is that I work with seventeen faculty and twenty-five staff who all know why I missed work earlier this week. They are all being nice and asking how everything went and how I’m doing. It’s nice to know they care.
However, when forty-two people bring up your grandmother’s death to you, pretty much all in one day, it doesn’t make it easy to push the idea out of your head and focus on the task at hand.
Just getting through work email this morning is draining, and incredibly tough because I can’t remember what I read just a second ago.
It is the times like these that I am very glad I work for the state. I can invoke warm-body mode and exist and no one really cares.
Tomorrow will be better. No one will have anything new to say to me. I will have had a full day in the world to remind me that it is, in fact, going to keep turning.
