"Grief recovery".
Those words meant little to me before late spring of 2021. Though I had experienced much abandonment, trauma, emotional neglect, abuse, and disappointments in life, I had never lost a close friend or family member to death... Grief, grueling and deep, seized me and knocked me to the gravel beneath, when I heard my husband had died the night before, on April 30th, 2021, while at a park birthday party for my 4-year-old's friend, one life-changing Saturday afternoon.
Bradley was a real charmer; you could add my name to his record of things stolen in the year 2017. My dad always said he could have made a great car salesman; and I agreed Bradley did have an uncanny ability to find the silver lining in any situation, no matter how grave it was, and sell you on those points - as if they made up for the ghastly things more obvious to the rest of us. He was a brilliant mind: mechanically-wired, with a sarcastic, witty humor that played on my dark side in the most entrancing way. We hurt and healed parts of each other the rest of the world never got to see. He was as handsome as the devil, and I saw evil in those blue eyes of his... more times than not. Trauma bonds are strong; but I found in the end, our genuine love for each other was the glue that held us together.
When Bradley died from his 13th overdose after a 20-year battle with Substance Use Disorder, I was heaved into the most inexplainable darkness I had ever faced, following that fateful moment on the phone, facedown in the rocks. For ten months, I was brain-dead. During those 300 days, I lost the ability to handle everyday functions and was obsessed with the death of my husband.
What were his final moments like? Did he ever really love me? How could he let this happen - why didn't he call me, instead? How am I - or my poor child - going to handle this reality? How can I be a widow at age 26? God, where are You now, exactly?
In my brain-dead season, I repeatedly wanted to talk to my mama. I just needed someone to listen to me share my thoughts and cry, and respond with sympathy and concern. Though my mother had began a weekend job, I could never remember she wouldn't be home on Saturdays or Sundays to answer my cries for comfort. Weekend after weekend, my dad would give the same stifled response when I would dial the number of my childhood home. "Amber, honey, your mama started working weekends, she's not here right now. I told you that several times... don't you remember?" The truth is, the only thought my brain held on to for months that summer was the faint echos reminding me the man I loved more than myself somehow didn't exist anywhere in this world, anymore.
At my full-time job, I spent 40 hours a week completing tasks I would later look back on, and have no memory of completing. At home, I put pizzas in the oven just to forget they were there, finding soggy, uncooked Digiorno, days later. I cried every day for five months following my panic attack facedown in the dirt. Every conscious and unconscious thought in my head centered around my beloved Bradley... I felt rage over what the devil had stolen from me, and how he had tormented and plotted against Brad his whole life, pushing him to the point of death any chance he could. Guilt plagued my mind and kept me awake some nights, as I recounted all the fights Bradley and I had, all the things I had taken personally, all the misconceptions I had about the disease of addiction... and I even felt relief that the battle was finally over for our family, and that I knew Bradley was resting in the care of Jesus, now. He was safe. That was enough to keep me from totally and completing losing it, most days. It still is.
Six months after Bradley's death, my tears only returned every few days, but my thoughts still raced over him, mine and Ava's loss, and all the things I was left here to make peace with on my own... the many things he never got to say "I'm sorry" for... and all the things he never came clean about in our marriage. I leaned into grief counseling through Authoracare, once I realized ALL hospice houses offer free, professional grief counseling to any bereaved person, no matter if the lost loved one was a resident in their facility or not, and no matter when the loved one passed away. I kept joining support groups to vent out all the thoughts in my head, repeatedly read a comforting book called Imagine Heaven which describes what Bradley now experiences, and I continued journaling and feeling the weight of sorrow on a daily basis as I let my husband go, breath by breath. Before grief recovery, must come grief survival. There were many times I legitimately questioned how it would be possible to somehow "feel okay again" one day... Grief recovery was inconceivable during my time of grief survival, in those first ten months.
It's been said, "The only way past grief is by traveling through it." My grief survival journey was a 300-day stretch of the most difficult traveling conditions my heart could fathom, with darkness so thick, I lost my own self in it for a while. Grief survival from the loss of my spouse also meant the death of who I was, as his wife. The woman I was turned to ash that day, too.
I slowly began to realize my identity and future would have to be re-built, from scratch. Accepting Bradley had taken half my heart to Heaven with him and I would never be whole again in this life was a heavy reality that became more true as the acceptance of Brad's death sunk in; it was the latter part of the two-part acceptance experience of losing my spouse. At the one-year mark of Brad's death, I struggled violently. I briefly entered the worst relational entanglement of my life, simply overtaken by the similar draw of the addicted and narcissistic spirits Bradley exhibited in his substance abuse, when I was pursued heavily by an deceitful alcoholic with similar patterns. As a result, I hit an emotional and mental breaking point where God moved me out of my first year of grief survival and into a six month experience that would slowly, and painfully, cultivate my grief recovery.
From May until October of 2022, I went off the radar. I left my career field, the city, and the promise of comfortable compensation. God gave me a job working all summer with ten wonderful horses, and my best friend, Taylor. The potent mixture of horse smells and barn noise, fresh air and sweat, and random talks and laughs about Bradley and many other things proved to be a wonderful program for my grief recovery.
A year and a half after my stunning, witty, sensitive 30-year-old best friend and lover entered God Almighty's presence, I entered a season where I felt the most healthy and whole I ever had. After being tried by the fires of relational, emotional, spiritual, and mental agonies, I had come forth as God-sustained gold.
You see... one thing I didn't mention about my grief survival journey is that to the degree my heart was utterly broken - was the same degree in which God's tender compassion, almost-tangible presence, and divine comfort came to save me. Every question I hurled up to Heaven, God gently (and unnecessarily) answered; each time I fell to my knees in tears on the floor - challenging God Almighty with my dim, human perspective - His Spirit tenderly met me on the floor; in the midst of that ten month stretch of perilous darkness, God kept a candle of hope burning for me, each day. He never let the wick burn out as He held back the darkness from snuffing my soul out, permanently. Though I could not always feel Him beside me, God had never left. He held me in the darkest night of my soul, and met me with richness I had never felt so deep in my human experience. The scripture in Psalms that reads "God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" became as real and alive to me as I imagine my dear Bradley is right now, standing arm in arm with Jesus.
"Grief recovery".
It's something I wish I had not learned so young, but it also proved to be a divine gift only God could offer, and I'm eternally grateful He offers it to every bereaved person who calls out, "Jesus..." God allowed this in my life, and maybe in your's too. It is promised to work in our life-plans for our good. (Romans 8:28) It's part of a bigger plan for my life that I'll stand with Jesus one day and recap, with a huge grin on my shining face - and we'll agree joyfully that it was a small piece of my life puzzle which brought about blessing and glory I could have never fathomed.
God is good on His promises.
God's reminder of that sustained me during my grief survival. My belief of that propelled me during six months of grief recovery. And the result of that is, and will continue to be displayed, in Established Family Recovery Ministries, as well as in my future here on earth, and beside Bradley in Glory, one day. God healed me from my grief, and called me to minister to other family members in their own journey, now. I am here to partner with God to now see healing, recovery, and the establishment of His promises in their lives, too.
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