Grief is a Funny Thing

Grief

 Just when I thought I was doing better.  We have been powering through clearing out my parents house.  While it is overwhelming and some weeks I leave and feel as if we are not making any headway, because seriously were does all this stuff come from?   But in my heart I know we are doing good.  We have moved through the house with laughter at the memories that our parents left us.  I have cried less and less.  But then grief reared it's ugly head.     In a way, it's funny.  But on the other hand, I just sit here and cry.

For the last two nights I have had dreams. Both of them had a similar theme, a parent had come back to life.  In the first dream, my dad was alive again. After all these years (dad died in 2017) he was back with us and alive.   And in my dream I was panicked, because over the last few months since mom died, we have dismantled his life.  We have gotten rid of things that he saved for years.  (Bulletins from every Sunday he preached, which spanned 50 years, files upon files both in paper and digital formats). And we have been ok with it, what we are getting rid of is not at all sentimental to us (we keep anything that is sentimental to us and we even have a box of things that we have kept that was highly sentimental to our parents, things like my dad's squeak toy from when he was a baby).   But in my dream I was in a state of panic because my dad had come back to life and I had to tell him that I had gotten rid of so much of his stuff.  I woke up before i had to tell him, but the angst was there.

Then last night, I dreamt that I was working and had to run out to get something for my computer, so I snuck into a visit to 'mom's new nursing home."  Mom directed me and I pushed her in a wheelchair through this new home and when people would talk to us, we would share the story about how she had been dead for 10 days, but was alive now and that is why we moved her to this new (weirdly laid out) nursing home.

I'm telling you, grief is weird!