To save time deliberating what word to use for the daily letter, I’m trying to go with one of the first words, if not the first, that comes to mind. Today I thought, Enough! Yes, with the exclamation point.

Enough!

Sometimes I’m just sick of grieving. After a song on the radio that hits me particularly hard, or a different trigger, sometimes I just get sick and tired of the whole thing.

Enough.

Who’s in charge here? Hasn’t there been enough? I haven’t seen Kade in 3.5 years. Who thinks it’s OK for a mom to go that long without seeing her child? I’m tired of memorializing. Remembering. Honoring. Grief groups. Grief reading. Grief counseling. Coping. Healing. Sadness. Tears. Enough.

I’ve felt this way a handful of times. It’s like anger…not spirited energizing anger, but exasperated defeated anger. Have you ever felt just sick and tired of something? That has gone on entirely too long? That you know won’t stop any time soon? The frustrated feeling of Enough! elicits as many tears as its precipitating wave of anguish. It’s doubly exhausting.

But tears, even the exasperated, defeated, angry, salty kind, give way to relief. One can’t stay in the pit of Enough!, or for that matter a griefburst (hence the word “burst” in it) for long. That feeling, like all of ‘em do, gives way to another after a bit.

My engineer husband must be rubbing off on me. Here’s my attempt to describe this mathematically, though it’s cyclical and I don’t know how to type in a circle:

Griefburst > Enough! > Exhaustion > Solitude > Rest > Look, my 5-year-old did something hilarious > Laughter = A bit of blessed homeostasis > Adele’s “When We Were Young” comes on the radio