Walking towards the barn my peripheral vision picks up the colour purple. I stop- my clematis is covered in purple blooms- how and when did that happen? Green grass. When did snow become grass? A surge of fear. Where have I been? Life just keeps going- birds building nests, flowers producing buds, everything in nature continuing as in previous years whereas life halted for me. When seeing the purple flowers I am aware that I am being pulled along.

When I venture out in public it shocks me. How is it that people are driving around, walking together, having a coffee, laughing with a friend- don’t they know what has happened? When in a grocery store I find myself searching for someone that has the same look on their face, a reflection of how I feel, just someone who knows, to not feel so all alone, another Mother…I know we would recognize each other. To silently acknowledge the grief and struggle… for them to say in their eyes “I know”.

Driving home, feeling small, Jason’s seat empty, I pull up behind a vehicle with smiling family decals on their back window. So many vehicles have them now. I don’t remember seeing so many before. There is a row of decals in the order of Mom, Dad, Boy, Boy, Girl, Cat, Dog. I thought how awful if one of their children die then what do you do? It would be torture trying to remove your deceased child’s decal- then there would be a space and you would have to move everyone over. Or would you take them all off or would you leave them as they are but then some stranger might say “Oh I see you have 2 boys and a girl, how old are they?” and then what? Either way it would be very sad and painful. Of course nobody thinks that the unimaginable will happen to them.

There is a sheer curtain seperating myself from this unknown world that I am now forced to live in. Feel incredibly misplaced. About six months after Jason died I told my Dr that I wanted to help people, maybe work for an organization such as Drs without borders. This seems so ridiculous now. Even my surroundings one year on still appear foreign and far away. Early this morning while working outside  I saw all from above- it was the strangest sensation. It was as if I was out of my body looking down upon myself, this tired looking person buckling under the weight of her grief and fear, trudging in and out of the barns and across the paddocks stepping on the same footprints that she put there yesterday and the day before and the day before that…..The same routine but internally always changing. I see this person struggling physically-walking slipping trying to keep her legs underneath her while leading 1100 lb animals through snow and over ice. Pushing and pulling the wheelbarrow steeped with manure through the drifted snow. Her upper body pitched forward, lower torso trailing, carrying bags of shavings, bales of hay. No one else, just her. I felt defeated and alone after this experience and it became clear to me that I could not do the horse boarding business any longer.

Back in the house, lemon juice falling onto a fresh cut on my thumb felt oddly satisfying. The sting made me feel alive. Grounded me for that moment.

I am startled by how grief has rampaged through my physical body. Catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror I don’t totally recognize the person looking back at me. Pale, thin, more lines, a downward curve of my mouth. Protruding collarbones catch my eye; where did they come from? People have told me that I am looking so much better which makes me think how ill and gaunt I must have looked before. My eyes look different. Almost like the hazel colour has disappeared. No expression. Dull. Despite adequate nutrition there is a persistent loss of weight and muscle. Upon receiving massage therapy for an onset of sciatica the therapist was astonished at the state of my muscle fibres. Like they have been rearranged. The muscles have a popping, bubbling sensation. Explaining the physical exertion in my job I could tell from her voice that she suspected there was more going on. Lying face down my heart started pounding. I watched the tears start to fall from the horseshoe shaped head support down to the floor. My body began to tremble. I was done for. Now sitting up, nursing a cup of herbal tea, tissue box on my knees, I told her what was going on with me. Being a mother herself she couldn’t imagine. She told me ” grief is physically demanding and can really take a toll on the body and that my body, my nervous system, is in a state of chronic stress and has been for many years. The death of my son has now put my body into a state of collapse. Don’t ignore what your body is trying to tell you.” This became clear to me when one morning I woke up and couldn’t lift the front of my foot. When trying to walk  the toes dragged, it was impossible to stand on my heel. The only way I could walk was to lift my knee up higher. This frightened me and how was I going to do my job? A diagnosis of Foot Drop was made. Thankfully my gait eventually recovered but I was beginning to understand what the massage therapist had told me. This was my body’s  voice and I needed to listen carefully.

Strange things began happening to my eyes. I truly felt that every part of me was weeping so I wasn’t concerned when a tear drop shape slid back and forth across the darkness behind my eye-much like a bright plump rain drop sliding across a window. It was like I was crying inside. While outside at night filling the horse’s water troughs I kept seeing intermittent flashes of light out of the corner of my eye which disappeared as I quickly turned my head. I had myself convinced that this was Jason trying to communicate with me. Weeks later I mentioned this to my Dr. and she suggested going to an ophthalmologist. Turns out it wasn’t Jason, I had a serious problem. The raindrop shapes were called floaters and they were crossing over my retina. The flashing lights were possibly from a tear (rip) in my retina. The next thing I was at the Eye Institute where I received emergency surgery for three retina tears (rips) and the starting of a retina detachment. I had never had any of these concerns before and now I sat in the very same chair in the very same office where Jason had sat for his last eye examination. I was overwhelmed. Shattered. Flooded with grief. The strength and spirit of Jason was with me as I quietly went into the surgical room.

Upon reading the following excerpt from a book by Deepak Chopra I realised that my physical body is actually grieving, suffering; it wasn’t just a sense of heavy pain running through tissue and cells that I was experiencing. If I was going to get through this dark tunnel I was stuck in I needed to tend to my physical suffering. This is my home, body and mind- all one. The body was communicating this to me. I needed to pay attention to its needs, to slow down, to be gentle to it.

” Grief is like depression but even more cold and numbing. The body can feel so heavy and and listless that the person feels dead while they’re still alive. Massive physical disruptions, toxic chemical changes happen right away. Stress, weakness,and decreased functioning will spread from organ to organ. Grief is a state of distorted energy that can last for years. Can make you susceptible to disease. This distortion of energy if allowed to grow can cause incoherence everywhere and if this seed of disruption is allowed to grow the energy of the whole body will break down. “