Grief is a Strange Thing.

She's banged up, mentally and emotionally. 
Literally and metaphorically. 
But every day she walks outside with a smile on her face because that's just who she is...

Grief is a strange thing. 

In the middle of happiness it's still there, lurking, waiting, wanting to consume you. Its silence is deafening, its hold is consuming. Grief waits in the shadows for a moment of weakness...it emerges in the words of a song and in the familiar places that we would visit. It lives so deeply within us that we can sometimes forget that it exists inside of us at all and, for a moment, a split second, we might laugh...a real, deep from our core belly laugh, the kind that grief almost made us forget.

Almost.

I have been without my son for 484 days.

I have spent two Christmas', two New Years, his 21st birthday, my 40th birthday and 478 more days without him.

At this point there is no real significance to any day. They all blend together.

Grief makes sure of that.

Complete happiness seems to escape me, for even in the moments that I am happy, grief reminds me that the happiness won't stay. It pushes the pain back into my life and then I push the happiness out. It's easier this way...by not allowing myself to be truly happy, I can never be truly hurt.

That is what grief has taught me.

But still, somehow in the past 484 days I have laughed, I have felt happy, I have learned to accept the darkness that will forever grip my soul. Because grief won't ever leave me, I must learn to live with it. I have made the conscious decision to revel in my moments of sheer unadulterated laughter and accept the few moments of happiness that I have discovered along the way.

They say that grief is a journey...I see it as a way of life.

It allows you to smile, to move forward, to live your life, but it never leaves you. It becomes you and you become it.

Grief is patient.

It will wait for you.

Grief just stays within us, silently waiting while we laugh, living within our tears. Grief becomes a part of who we are.

In all honesty, it has become such a huge part of who I am that I don't remember who I was 484 days ago.

I look at photos of myself and I don't always recognize the person I see. Because she is smiling...and me? I am consumed by grief.

That's the strangest thing of all about grief.

It let's you smile, and laugh and feel happy...and then it shows up again, to remind you of all the things you'd rather not feel.

I have just begun to accept grief into my life instead of pretending that it doesn't exist.

I am now hopeful that grief will step aside and make room for happiness in my life, so that both may coexist and I can begin to recognize that girl in the photos.

The smiling girl that I long to be.