Bridget McNulty Posts

Have you read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz? Wonderful book… I’ve read it twice. Here are the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

The one I’m thinking about most is: ‘Be impeccable with your word.’ In certain situations, it’s the one I find trickiest.

Of all the things I didn’t anticipate about grief, I think the one that surprises me the most is how boring it is. I am so tired of being sad. I am so sad and tired. I have no new words to describe how much I miss my mom, but I still miss her achingly.

Things have been pretty hard and sad around here, as you can tell from all the depressing blog posts. But then Mark got hit by a car on Friday, and all of a sudden I was longing for the hard, sad days of before.

He’s okay – or he will be, after 6 weeks of bed rest, when his broken back heals itself and his sprained wrist comes right. He’s lucky: it could have been much worse. But being knocked off your motorbike and skidding across the road till your lumbar spine hits the pavement is pretty bad, let’s be honest. And it has made one thing very clear to me.

Four weeks since my mom died, and I am deep in the fog of grief. I just heard the term this weekend, and it so perfectly captures what it feels like right now. “What happens is that our grief gets so heavy that it surrounds us, clouds our minds, and interferes with our ability to think clearly. We’re on overload,” writes Kenneth C. Haugk.

“The special days are the hardest,” they said. “The birthdays, the holidays, Christmas… That’s when you’ll miss your mom the most.” Except in the 3 weeks since my mom died, it’s been nothing but special days… This is birthday season.

A lot of lovely people have been asking how I’m feeling lately, and it’s a difficult question to answer. Not only because I feel different every day, but because the feelings don’t fit into words as easily as they used to. I usually settle for: okay.