The Front Row Seat Nobody Would Choose
It’s impossible to know. Until you’ve stood in the front at the cemetery or sat in the front row seat of a funeral. A seat nobody would ever choose.
The pain and anguish. The helplessness. The desperate but silent plea for everything to go back to how it was. Before.
It’s impossible to know what it feels like to stare at the closed casket desperately wanting to hold your loved one but knowing you can’t.
Or the disbelief felt as you stare at the urn now filled with their ashes. Ashes you will carefully place on the fireplace mantle or next to your bed when you get home.
It’s impossible to know how gutted you feel as the tears stream down your face. Clinging to every word of the music you picked out just days before. Music you hoped your loved one would like. Music you pray they can somehow still hear.
The words spoken hang in the air like a stale piece of old toast. And you desperately try to find meaning when nothing feels real.
Flowers stand guard around your loved one but the hues of color and vibrance are now dulled by sadness and tears.
It’s impossible to know how it feels as the service comes to an end. You want it to be over but you feel frozen in your seat clinging to it like a lifeline. And as you are gently ushered to stand with tissue in hand you robotically walk past a sea of sad faces avoiding eye contact for fear you will lose it again.
You stand in line greeting people and thanking them for coming. Everyone means well as they tell you how beautiful the service was and how sorry they are. They tell you to stay strong and call if there’s anything you need.
But you won’t call and you don’t feel strong.
There are hugs shared, stories told, and there are traces of laughter and smiles. As memories of better days flood your heart and for a moment, the love is stronger than the pain.
It’s impossible to know how hard it is to walk into your house after everyone else goes back to their own lives and homes. How deafening the silence is even when the grief you now carry is so loud.
It’s impossible to know how terrifying it can feel when the sun sets and darkness crowds its way into the room. How lonely it is as you wander without direction feeling like a stranger in your own home.
It’s impossible to know how grief disrupts everything or how grief rearranges who you are. How messy, unpredictable, and exhausting everything now feels.
And if you manage to drift off to sleep even for an hour or two, you wake up wondering if it was all a dream only to remember this is your new, heartbreaking reality.
It’s impossible to know what it’s like to face another day without your loved or what is’t like to say goodbye over and over again. To miss them every moment or how deep the void.
I’m sorry if you know the reality of saying goodbye to someone you love. I’m sorry if you too have sat in the front row in a seat no one would ever choose.
And if you have yet to sit in the front row please don’t judge the grieving who personally know. Instead, sit with them, listen, support with compassion, and show up with unconditional love.
There are no perfect words or blueprints for doing this thing called grief. But together we can move forward one step at a time.
It’s impossible to know. Until you do.
With love -
Michele