Finding HighTide

   

It has taken me approximately 10 months to open my laptop for the purpose of writing for my blog.  There was nothing I wanted to say and honestly those routine everyday responsibilities took everything I had to complete, courtesy of death.  It was the sudden death of my niece Brianna, who was just 18 days from her 21^st   birthday, which had me at the mercy of grief.  Grief is a powerful emotion that you either learn to live with and manage or it consumes your life.  It is a seemingly a very personal emotion that is defined differently for each of us, but apparently we all go thru the same seven stages typically, identified as:
- Shock or Disbelief
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Guilt
- Depression
- Acceptance and Hope

My heart was broken, yet life and time went on, eventually moving me along with it.  I thought I was handling my grief very well and keeping it all together, but that was not the case.  By the mercy of God and the bond I had with my niece I did not struggle with guilt associated with her life or her dying.  We had no unresolved issues.  She knew I loved her and I knew she loved me.  The logical scientist part of me must have reasoned that “bargaining stage” was futile.    It was anger, depression, and denial stages that I seemed to be bouncing back and forth with that left me in a constant state of anxiety like I was hanging off the edge of a cliff. 

 The only thing I knew to do was to do those everyday life tasks. I began managing my life.   I coordinated schedules, completed deadlines, and everything else that was expected and required.   At the end of the day when all the life managing tasks had been checked off completed and everyone was asleep, I would lay awake and focus on what tasks needed to be checked off for the next day.  Sometimes I would play games on my iPad until I eventually fell asleep, so as not to think about Brianna.  

One night I thought I would try music to distract my thoughts to slumber.   The music instead created a flood of memories.   I did not stop them and let the memories wash over me.  It was like there was a movie playing only for me of our life adventures together.  As the memories played I began to feel comforted by the realization of just how much alike we had been.  From our disorganized whirl wind ways, our creative nature, to our ADD tendencies that included blurting out whatever we happened to be thinking at any given moment.   I then realized I was letting Brianna down.

Brianna grew up wanting to make everyone happy, a byproduct of two divorces and blended families.   There came a point in her life when what she wanted for her own life conflicted with the life that others wanted for her.   It took courage for her to stand up to those she loved and take control.  She had to break free from the guilt of not doing things in her life just to make someone else happy and risk losing them in her life.   The risk she took to follow her own path turned her from an insecure girl, to confident Army Soldier ready to find her place and purpose in this world.   I was so proud of her, because she was living the life I had always wanted for her…..her own.

I was no longer living my own life, but managing responsibilities in a life.     I was hanging on to the anger, denial, and depression because letting them go, was not only finally accepting her death, it came with the realization that if I lost her I could lose anyone at any time.    I was tired and needed to let go.  Even though I could rationalize that Brianna would always be where she had always been, in my heart, I just didn’t know how to let go of that proverbial cliff I was hanging on.

Ironically it would be Brianna's father, my brother, who would facilitate my white knuckled release.   My lack of sleep, constant state of anxiety, and grief stage hopping left me with very little patience.   When my brother started looking into doing Crossfit and started talking about it every time we spoke, I took drastic measures.   I called up the local CrossFit gym and signed us up for a class and then I called him told him what I did.   I had no idea what I was getting myself into, since I lied and had not watched any of the video links that he had e-mailed me, nor was I really paying attention to him when he was talking about it.   I just wanted to stop hearing about it.

I will admit I was very intimidated walking into that gym for the class.   If not for my brother being there, the fact I was not going to admit fear, and to a lesser extent that I had not listened to anything he had told me, I would have turned around and walked out.  The class was made up of mostly young attractive Army men in their twenties possible early thirties, thanks to our close proximity to an Army base.   At least I was going to have something enjoyable to look at while I was being tortured and making an idiot out of myself.     After the Crossfit instructor went through the work out of the day and had scaled it down to accommodate for our years of inactivity and excuses, the fun began.   The majority of those attractive male Army soldiers then proceeded to shed their shirts in a vain effort to reduce the hot muggy southern weather, at which point I started to laugh.   I was not nervously laughing at the site of the shirtless young males, but I was laughing because at that moment I knew I was letting go of that proverbial cliff and in some cosmic way it was Brianna that had got me to that particular class.   It was her telling me in her own funny and sarcastic way “look see life is good and there are reasons to be happy and here is the proof”.    The reason I knew this was all her doing because all I wanted to do was to capture a stealth cell phone image of those well-defined young attractive shirtless Army guys and text it to her with the caption “Bet you wish you got stationed here instead of Texas”.

My brother and I survived that first class, barely.  The two weeks that followed we found that the “easy” air squats they had us doing without any kind of weight (unlike the heavily weighted bars everyone else was using) left us both of whimpering in pain every time we had to stand or sit.  Despite my physical pain and lack of athletic ability my brother and I continued to attend classes.  This was due largely by the supportive and encouraging atmosphere created by the owners, instructors and fellow “athletes”   (I am more of an athlete wannabe) we found at the Hightide Crossfit  gym here in Richmond Hill, GA.   

I have been attending classes 3X a week for about 5 months now, even after my brother had to scale back due to a back injury, and I have yet to attend another class made up of mostly young fit Army guys  like those who  had shed their shirts  in that first class.  To me that is just another confirmation of it being Brianna getting me to that class on that particular day.  There are times in class when I feel discouraged because I am not able to do a workout movement or a particularly grueling workout. To make it through I just think of Brianna who was nervous and scared to go to boot camp and was worried she would not make it, but she did.    I also like to think that Brianna is there with me, laughing and joking, as I attempt great athletic feats, like jumping up on a 12 inch high box without hitting my shins.  

Crossfit has not only helped me to lose weight and gain physical strength, but also to become emotionally stronger.   Brianna found an outlet for me to be able to release all the emotional turmoil. Classes are something that I chose to do for myself and no one else.   It reminds me that I am alive and not to take that for granted and that I have choices.  I can chose to make whatever time I have left count and not be at the mercy of grief.  I can chose to run, I can chose to laugh, and I can chose to live my life as if Brianna is still here watching.   I am redefining myself and my potential.   I have chosen to let go of grief and find hope in acceptance.  People may notice the transformation that has occurred on the outside but the biggest transformation has truly happened on the inside.

This was one of her's and mine favorite photos of the two of us....In this photo we were both just so happy to see each other. You can see the love and joy.  She was on her way home from  a funeral and drama that had taken place.  At one point I asked her where she was and we realized we were both on I-85 heading towards each other!  We laughed at the odds, because she didn't know I was traveling to work and I had no idea she was taking a detour to stop in and visit her husbands family on the way back to Texas.   We both needed that brief moment at a gas station exit for her to be held in arms of someone that grounded her and  never let her go and for me it gave me this picture and a memory that will last until I can hold her  again.