This morning I woke up and realized that I had slept. The whole night, and this morning I feel rested.
In the month since Warren died, I have gotten maybe 4 hours of sleep in a stretch if I was lucky. My grief has been making demands. Fussing at the most inconvenient times, and spitting up on my life when I least expected it. Yet I care for this grief – hold it when it needs attention, rock my grief to sleep when it has cried itself out. There are times when I hold my sleeping grief inside me, aware that it is there but dormant, look at its sleeping face – Warren’s face – and my heart fills with a bittersweet love. My grief connects me to him still.
There have been days recently where I have been able to move forward while my grief was sleeping: I’ve had two job interviews and I’m starting to look forward to having a purpose and a routine again.
So this morning was a milestone for me: my grief baby slept through the night. I’m hopeful: maybe we’ve gotten to that stage where we are starting to understand each other, this grief and I.
