Grief the thief

Photo Credit: Bruce Berglund

My Aunt Megan died. I find I have to keep saying this to myself. COVID has taken many things from just about everyone of us. For me it has been one of the rituals that come with death. There was no gathering or funeral for extended family. There was no story telling, laughing, or hugging my cousins. I logically understand this, but I find myself keep coming back to Megan died? It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense. There isn’t space for it.

So I had to make space. I ran away to the north woods alone in the cabin. Snow quietly falls out the window and the fire crackles before me. Grief has been waiting for me. It has been sitting just under my skin. I can feel it getting restless and tired of waiting. Ready or not, now it is time.

Here is my Megan story. My Aunt Megan was my godmother, but she wasn’t my closest of Aunts. She lived most of my life in another state or country. We would see each other in the middle of family holiday chaos a couple times a year. In that way she was very much a godmother. Not physically near, but I knew if I needed her she would be there.

Not very long ago I was struggling. We were struggling as a family. Our 3rd baby had kicked my child’s anxiety into an uncontrollable hurricane that consumed our family. I was getting up 7 or 8 times a night between nursing a newborn and a child screaming throughout the night refusing to go to bed. We had so much family that it seemed impossible to find the balance of seeing everyone, actually spend time with my partner, and a close family relationship had come to a challenging, painful, and hurtful impasse.

For some reason I reached out to Megan. There was something about this that just felt right outside of what logically made sense.

We met up over at a coffee shop in a random small town in between the two of us. It was so unbelievably hot and we continually shifted under the outdoor umbrella trying to stay in the shade. We chatted for hours over coffee while she held my newest babe. I talked endlessly in a sleep deprived stupor and she held space for me. She listened. She was empathetic. She said “I’m sorry this is hard.” I knew I could trust her to keep the things private that could hurt others in my family. She loved me and held sacred space for me when I was so weary and needed strong loving arms to hold me.

Megan then said she would be there for me anytime I needed her. Then she got cancer and died. It doesn’t make sense that someone at 50 could be so healthy and then dead within 6 months. It doesn’t make sense that she loved being a mother so much and she was so excited for this next phase of life where she got to spend time with her best friend. Her husband. She left too early. She left behind this beautiful family and this beautiful future that she envisioned that will never come to be.

Life is fragile. Life is beautiful and painful. Life ends.

I wish I had hundreds of conversations in the sun drinking coffee and discussing life. Instead I got one. One beautiful afternoon when I need her most. One beautiful afternoon where for a few hours she was mine.

My Aunt Megan died. Life is fragile. Life is beautiful and painful. Life ends.

This life of ours is finite. We are here and then we are gone. I just wish she could have been here longer.