A Season of Surroundings
What defines a season? Is it the leaves that fall as Summer turns to a fit of color and crisp air? Is it slush on the roads and tulips covered with frost as Winter gives way to Spring? Is it the transition period you feel between graduating college or high school or quitting your first job and not knowing what the fuck to do for the rest of your life? Is it the acknowledgment that a friendship is fading and you find yourself in a weird purgatory of loneliness? Is it city lights and decorated trees? Is it the start of a new year? Is it a period grief after losing someone that brought so much light into your life?
My Grandma died suddenly a month ago. I don’t write that hoping for pity or sadness for me, I write it to admit that I have defined this season of my life as a blur. I am caught between gaslighting myself into believing this loss in my life isn’t nearly as important or as detrimental as others experience and allowing the grief to rush over me like a wave cutting into the sand. I am caught between accepting the present for what it is and feeling whipped into a whirlwind of disconnection and disassociation. I am caught up in this season.
I flew home to attend the funeral of my Grandmother, a beautifully kind and pure woman; too funny, too nurturing, too much of everything good for this world. As my family prepped photo boards and picked out color themes and decided on food to serve, wonderings about how the funeral would play out came up in conversation.
“I don’t think there will be that many people in attendance”, voiced my Mom, pushing down her big and devastating emotions of losing her own Mom to trudge through the executive functioning shit show of funeral planning. I sat silently, feeling curious about the importance of funeral attendance. As we know, funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. They provide some sort of closure, some completeness. Not so interestingly enough, grief knows no completeness.
I came to the conclusion that I suppose it feels nice to know people have shown up for you in support, even if you aren’t there. I suppose it feels nice to recognize the impact you have made to people still on Earth. I suppose it feels nice to feel surrounded.
A season of surroundings.
I grew up hearing my parents preach to me how important it is to surround yourself with people who treat me well, accept me for who I am, support me, and love me. I can assure you, all of that preaching was met with an eye roll and an: “I knowwwwwwwwww”.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know that so many people could fit into one line to give my aunts and uncles hugs and condolences. I didn’t know that I would be a shoulder for my cousin to cry on, a hand for my sister to hold. I didn’t know that to know my mom or her siblings meant you knew my grandma. I didn’t know surroundings extended far beyond your physical space.
A season of surroundings.
There are 1,440 minutes in a day. Every single minute you are surrounded. By people, by your own thoughts, by your physical space, by decisions and actions and inaction.
This means you have 1,440 choices in a day. A choice to turn your mind to calm and comfort in a situation you feel uncomfortable in. A choice to get coffee with a good friend you haven’t seen in a while. A choice to clean your home after a busy holiday. A choice to make decisions and take action or inaction to find a season of surrounding.
Make it a surrounding of warmth, of nurturing, of laughter and comfort when life feels hard. Make it a surrounding filled with people who treat you well, accept you for who you are, support you, and love you.
As I swim around this blurry and disconnected season, I come up for air through the light of my surroundings. I find peace in the surroundings my Grandma gave legacy to and the surroundings she now finds herself in.
Wherever this reaches you, whatever season you find yourself in as you enter this new year, I hope that you can invite in a season of surroundings.
Take care of yourselves in 2024. :)
Emily
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