Grieving is Twisted (Part I)

Getting close to the two year anniversary of Mario's death, I have noticed my mind and heart getting caught up in all of the feelings. Deciding to blog to "get it out of my head and onto a screen" (as I like to say) I noticed the blog post below that never was posted - on purpose. In fact, my feelings were running at such a high rate that there is a part 2. After reading through it all, my thought is that I could just say "ditto" and leave it at that. It's all relevant and it is as if I am starting to relive some of it again.

Please know that there is never a day or waking hour that Mario doesn't cross my mind for something. But this time of year brings a hypersensitivity with it apparently. I was hopeful it would just be the first year...I can confirm it is the second as well.

Although for whatever reason I was too afraid to post this six weeks after Mario's death, it's getting posted now. For anyone who is going through the grieving process anew, I hope it is helpful. A glimpse into my reality in April of 2014...(part 2 tomorrow)

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Grieving is twisted.

This blog post could close right there with that one sentence, those three little words, but I'll explain - if I can. 

Today marks the six week anniversary of that dreaded call from the Deputy Coroner who had been sitting outside the house in Champaign for well over an hour waiting for me to come "home", not realizing we had moved just three weeks earlier to Tuscola. She didn't want to deliver the news over the phone and hesitated many times before she shared that Mario was in an accident. It wasn't until I assured her that my husband was next to me that she finally said those words: "I'm so sorry. He did not survive." 

What the very kind Deputy Coroner didn't realize is that I already knew. I didn't know it for a fact, but I knew something wasn't right. Something inside me stirred and my heart dropped when I received a twitter notification from the local paper at 7:27 p.m. saying, "Police report an accident at Cardinal and Rising." I tried to reason with myself that Mario wouldn't go that way. He would take the interstate all the way to lacrosse practice. Then the internal wrestling began: "no, he wouldn't have known to do that. He would have taken familiar routes. Why would he do that? Why Rising? No, he would have just taken Staley. No, he could have taken Rising thinking it was a shortcut. I remember when he told me he thought it was a shortcut. What am I thinking? This is crazy. That isn't him. He would call if he was in an accident." 

A few minutes before 8 I gave in and sent him a text to ask if he made it; something I never do. No response. Again with the reasoning: practice started at 8. He isn't around his phone and that explains the unresponsiveness. More wrestling. When 9:30 rolled past on the clock and still no response even after practice should have been over, I reasoned he was a chatter box and loved to hang out after practice to talk and throw the ball around with his friends. But looking back, deep down, I knew. 

10:18 - Casting out the "bait" text telling him to invite his friend to supper to celebrate his birthday with us the next night, including in it a cautionary, "Get home safely" and seeing it turn green (meaning it is not connected to wireless or the phone is off - for iPhones), I knew. I knew but I tried to call anyway - it went straight to voice mail. I knew. Right after I told Greg we were going to wait this out, the phone rang. "NO ID". I knew. I'm pretty sure Greg knew too. And it was in that moment that life changed and the race was on to get in touch with our immediate family before the coroner's office had to release his name to the press who had already been out at the scene and showed footage of it on the 10 p.m. news. (So thankful we don't watch the news!) 

In the middle of the night, and into the wee hours of the morning, our house was flooded with the love and presence of Pastor Jerris and some of our closest friends. Even in the extreme emotional exhaustion, sleep did not come easy and when there was a momentary drift into sleep, my body would not allow it to continue and woke itself up with the groaning of the heart that escaped through my voice involuntarily. I cannot explain it - it was as if sound just overflowed from the breaking of my heart. 

For the next two weeks everything was on a foggy autopilot. There were momentary tears as the pain welled up but most of my waking hours were steeped in the details of getting his sister home from Spain, cemetery plots, obituaries, caskets, flowers, service information, clothes for him, clothes for us, and the list goes on...and continues to go on even to this day.  

And the grieving doesn't end there...