That sneaky "grieving" response

Well, I did have the grieving thing going on the last week. I don't know how much was from the "anniversary" and now much was caused by my writing about it.

Anyway, I expected I had done a pretty good job of getting things out of my system but that's not how it worked out. After the posting on Friday morning, I took off the day from work and went looking at new bicycles. I was busy all day long and finally I called Dad around 9:00pm Friday night to say hi. We talked for an hour and by the end we're both laughing and crying at the same time.

Well, so then I thought it was out of my system again - Nope! Saturday night I called Kim to say hi and then "here we go again" with the laughing and crying. It really doesn't bother me to be doing it - laughing and crying are happening at the same time and there's not so much sadness in it these days. It just continually surprises me that after four months the grieving response (getting choked up and tearing up in the eyes) still comes and goes as it pleases.

I don't think it's the "four month" timeframe that surprises me as much as the grieving response itself. It's sneaky and it doesn’t give any warning - it just pops up out of nowhere. I go to say something on the phone and suddenly I'm choked up and no sounds come out of my mouth. It used to create some long pauses, but now I just start laughing and I can say "oops - it's that grieving thing again".