{"id":480,"date":"2015-12-02T21:25:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T21:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=480"},"modified":"2015-12-02T21:25:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T21:25:08","slug":"grief-of-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Grief of the wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the one year anniversary of my mom’s death.\u00a0 I knew it was coming.\u00a0 I’ve been anticipating it.\u00a0 To tell you\u00a0the truth, I’ve been dreading it.<\/p>\n

All year long, I’ve seen other people post things about death anniversaries.\u00a0 They are usually these beautiful tributes to people they’ve lost describing the deep impact of their lives and how much they miss them.\u00a0 I read them.\u00a0 I’m touched by them.\u00a0 I usually cry over them.\u00a0 I hurt for my friends who are grieving.<\/p>\n

But to be honest, I secretly (well, not so secretly anymore) hate them.\u00a0 They touch a deep scar that still hurts when poked; one that was created years ago causing a deep rift in my relationship with my mom.<\/p>\n

There came a time in my late teens\u00a0when my mom no longer wanted me to be a part of her life; I wasn’t welcome.\u00a0 It was a horrible time in both of our lives filled with anger and deep hurt.\u00a0 Over the next several years, there was some contact, but usually out of necessity not desire.\u00a0 God worked in both of our lives and there was eventually forgiveness, but no real intimacy or closeness.\u00a0 Over the last several years, we spoke more often and honestly, but there was always a barrier…a\u00a0point where she said, ‘no further.’<\/p>\n

\"i_built_a_wall_around_my_heart_\"<\/a>Yes, I loved her and she loved me.\u00a0 But as I’ve shared before<\/a>, she had some of her own deep hurts and wounds.\u00a0 Coupled with the painful circumstances between us, a wall was built that kept most everyone at bay.<\/p>\n

So, a year after her death, I find myself wanting\u00a0to\u00a0be like\u00a0other people who write those loving tributes; missing the presence of\u00a0 the person lost, longing to have just one more conversation with them, and feeling the loss so deeply because they were so close.\u00a0 But that’s not my reality.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0reality is once again mourning the loss of a dream.\u00a0 A dream that one day there would be a closeness, an intimacy that I always longed for.\u00a0 I had grown to accept the state of our relationship and was thankful that we were in each other’s lives, but I held onto hope that some day it would be different.\u00a0 That glimmer of hope died a year ago today.<\/p>\n

So I grieve.<\/p>\n

I grieve that there was so much pain and hurt in our past.\u00a0 I grieve that the wall stood strong and was not destroyed.\u00a0 I grieve that we missed out on what could have been a beautiful relationship.<\/p>\n

I know that one day I will\u00a0see her again\u00a0and there will be no pain, no mourning, no wall.\u00a0 But for today, I grieve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the one year anniversary of my mom’s death.\u00a0 I knew it was coming.\u00a0 I’ve been anticipating it.\u00a0 To tell you\u00a0the truth, I’ve been dreading it. All year long, I’ve seen other people post things about death anniversaries.\u00a0 They … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/i_built_a_wall_around_my_heart_.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}