Living on the bottom of the ocean

This note may be hard to follow, I will apologize up front.  Picture the ocean from top to bottom.  When Todd & I learned to communicate as a couple from our time in counseling, we learned that most of the communication we had been sharing was "on the top", up where the waves are.  The top of the waves is where "the fluff" of life is, the day to day stuff, the weather, what color socks you are wearing, that kind of thing.  The things with no real consequence.  Fluff.  Then we learned that in order to have better communication, we had to go deeper.  So for instance, if we were fighting over nobody doing the dishes (fluff), going deeper meant identifying what was underneath - was one of us feeling over worked?  Under appreciated?  Going deeper in the water, down where the fish swim, so to speak.  You get the concept now?  A good relationship learns to go deep and keeps a balance between fluff, deeper waters, and all the way to the bottom of the ocean.  The bottom is where the deeper things of life and faith are dealt with.  Life & death matters.  Core values.   Purpose of life kind of things.

The other day, someone commented privately to me that the majority of my status updates on facebook dealt with Max's death for a very long time.  That's true.  I was living on the bottom of the ocean, trying to sort out life and death - literally.  It didn't feel *right* to talk about fluff.  What does fluff matter when my child is dead.  I had to "hide" 90% of my facebook feed because it was FLUFF.  WHO CARES, I would think to myself.  I've heard other grieving parents complain about the same things.  At first, nearly EVERYTHING got pushed up to fluff - even work, school, the checkbook (who cares if the bills are paid, Max is dead ... who cares if Wesley goes to school, Max did and now he's dead ...) - thankfully, these things slowly regain their importance and perspective returns.

In many ways, I am finding that I still live at the bottom of the ocean.  My counselor said that when a tragedy happens in our life, we become very existential, trying to find meaning and purpose in our lives and in our loss.  So if something has no purpose, then why would I waste my time doing it?  Or talking about it, or thinking about it, etc.  Again, what does that matter if Max is dead.  She hears me, understands me, and makes an observation about staying down at that level.  There is not much sunlight down there, it's murky and dark.  And it's very isolated.  Whoa.  She is right about that.

So now she is trying to help me see that it's okay to come up to the shallow waters and have fluff and fun again.  (How ironic, right?)  And I feel like I may never truly find the meaning & purpose behind Max's death.  So am I choosing to stay down there forever just because I cannot find what I am looking for?  Ug!  No wonder they call it "grief WORK".