And I thought “What are we doing here?”

I found a small collection of notes I had taken at the first workshop at The Compassionate Friends Conference we attended in July, it always takes a couple of months to process those three days. I remember the first morning of the conference being so tired, in sticker shock with how much a single cup of coffee cost, totally disoriented in the huge hotel, and more than a small part of me was still in Minnesota at the site of Justin’s accident. I sat there thinking “What are we doing here?” I even wrote that as my first note before the speaker had even started. We were tired, had just dropped almost eight dollars on large coffees, plain black coffee, I was already stressing about how much meals were going to cost us, nothing was in walking distance, for frugal planners this can pave the way for serious stress. I had started the litany in my head, this is stupid, we should not have come, this is not a prudent expenditure of resources, and why bother with learning more about grief? Justin is dead, no amount of knowledge will change that, life will always suck. Welcome to a snapshot of my head noise.

And then Mitch started to speak, and these were my next notes:

“realized during the first presentation how much we suppress through the year. How thin the crust is, how fresh the pain is right under the surface.”  “We store grief in our bodies.”

I think the above are Mitch Carmody’s words, my notes and memory lack continuity, and the pain is still so fresh, right under that thin crust. The tears start and my body shakes in relief almost, relief that someone can put into words what I live everyday, can explain it to me in terms I can grasp, can look at us sitting in the chairs with love and compassion. My notes are like splotches of ink in my conference book. A few stand out, I wrote down that it takes five years for our stress slate to return to where is was stronger than before the trauma of the death of our child. And that it is okay to “Stop and Drop.” I remember being glued to Mitch’s words, he had captured the scientist in me as he shared how our bodies respond to grief and stress, and how toxic it can be to our bodies if we do not care for ourselves. I forgot how much we paid for coffee, I forgot how much lunch was going to cost us, but I remembered the most important thing – what we were doing there.

We were there to learn how to live our reality. Every penny spent was an investment in us, it was an investment for our surviving son who lost his only brother, so that maybe he wouldn’t completely lose his parents as well. It was an investment in thirty three years of marriage that it would not buckle under the stress of loss. We were there so that for three days we could let that crust disintegrate and let that lava of grief flow out and away. And we were there for him, for Justin, to remember that because he lived, we got to love, and because we love, we grieve.

We thought that we would skip next year’s conference, we had tentative plans for another journey, my heart pulled a little, but I knew we could not do both ventures. Now another opportunity has presented itself that changes the landscape for next summer even more so and will perhaps bring us to revising our plans for pilgrimage until 2016. I have a sense of peace knowing that we could attend next summer’s national conference, I feel in my heart I need that yearly gathering of the tribe, to hear that challenge to live that can only be spoken by seasoned grievers. I see the small fruit growing from intentionally reinvesting in our new life, from intentionally taking that time to be affirmed in our journey.  I am afraid that if I miss the clan gathering, I will ask myself “Why wasn’t I there?”

Maybe I will get to see Texas after all.