Back in 2015 we lost my dad. I wasn't there, living halfway across the country, but my family was at a school play that my nephew was in, and, saying their goodbyes, my dad got in and started their van, and in the time it took my mom to walk around to the passenger side, he was gone. The reason I'm recounting this is because a couple weeks ago I had an experience that shook me up deeply and unexpectedly.
Since that fateful day, if I'm in the driver's seat with a passenger, I've half-consciously waited to start the vehicle until the other person gets in. Since I was aware of it, if only slightly, I thought I was just being silly, maybe superstitious, but that was all the deeper it went. So a few weeks ago when my fiancé and I were picking up her paintings from a showing in a local café, I jumped into the car and started the engine without thinking. It was only a few seconds before she got in, but I was already sick to my stomach, having trouble breathing, and had tears running down my cheeks, careening toward a full panic attack. Though I probably shouldn't have, I still drove home through tears and nausea half-denying anything was wrong.
Once home, with a chance to process what happened, I realized I'd just brushed up against my own mortality, as well as having breached a deeper level of grief I hadn't known was there. I also think that part of it was a rite of passage, stepping into my dad's place and taking the reins of authority for myself - A death and rebirth experience in itself. The dark and heavy feelings stayed with and overshadowed me for at least a couple days. On the heals of this experience, that night or the next, I had a dream that added steam to my already grieving heart.
Years ago I had one of the best friends I'd ever had. She truly was a sister to me and we went everywhere and did everything together. Then one day something changed. Through an unfortunate misunderstanding, what appeared to me as drawing a boundary was perceived as abandonment, and overnight I lost my best friend. I was abruptly and totally cut off and would never talk to her again. Any attempts at reconciliation or redemption were met with nothing but deafening silence.
Well, in this dream I had somehow stumbled into a business place she owned, and through the course of our meeting again, we reconnected and made up, agreeing, however shaky it might be, to renew our friendship. When I awoke, the realization that it was all just a dream washed over me and I wept. Again I'd breached a layer and level of grief I didn't even know was there.
There've been other recent cases of small griefs coming up, but these two are probably the biggest. It does seem to be a pattern, like a great purging and clearing out, making room for bigger and better things to arrive. As best I can, sometimes more successfully than others, I sit with the feelings and allow them to rise up, afterwards finding that stillness and clarity that comes after the storm has passed -- An emptiness, though raw and exposed, that holds the pregnant promise of change and growth.
Within this same time frame someone has wandered into my life who seems ready to take on the empty space left by my former friend -- One of those first meetings where you swear you've known this person forever. It would seem that the above housecleaning, though difficult and painful, was purposeful for clearing that space in my heart - The space I'd been keeping barricaded and holding in reserve - for one sister, and thereby creating a vacancy to be filled by the arrival of another sister. Until I let go and grieved fully the one friendship, there was no space or room in my energy or my life for another one, who, unbeknownst to me, was waiting in the wings to enter my life.