Healing, through Sea Creatures

I was just thinking about after my dad died, if I could pinpoint the time when the grief started to lift a bit and I started to feel like myself again. I didn't think I could, but it turns out that I know exactly when it was. It was during a trip to a cabin in Michigan for Spring Break. Michigan, not such a spring-breaky place, but I went with good friends and my boyfriend at the time (husband now) and we did pretty much nothing for a week.

I say nothing, but I guess we did stuff. We walked in the snow. We ate crazy-ass thrown together meals, and we went to a brewery. We played cuthroat euchre. We laughed a lot. And when we left, I felt a little bit like the fog was lifting. When we got back, I said to my supervising pastor for my field work, "guess what. I'm out of heavy grief." And he hugged me like he knew exactly what I meant and said something like, "congratulations" in a way that wasn't sarcastic at all...just that he had been there and was glad I was through it.

And here I am again, after grieving the loss of this church and all that goes with it, and I can pinpoint again when I started to feel better. It was at the Georgia Aquarium, last week.

This trip was a consolation prize from my family to my family, mostly because our air conditioning decided to break during the hottest week of the summer. Also because we were supposed to go to a cabin that I had grand plans for...to be all healed and stuff again...but it didn't happen so we went to the aquarium.

It was so, so, beautiful. The beluga whales looked like they were dancing. Schools of rays, which happen to be my very favorite sea creature, swam over our heads...literally a hundred of them together. The sea lions played and the otters decided to come check us out, which my baby son laughed at.

It was also not four thousand degrees in there, which was a big relief in and of itself. We stayed there for no less than eight hours, and then we went home, and the next day (I'll omit the part about how everybody cranked around since the house was still hot as hell) I felt a little bit better. The day after that I felt healed, or on my way.

I guess what mostly both experiences were all about was getting out of where we live for a while. Friends and sea creatures and beer and red velvet cake help, but I think it's mostly just being somewhere other enough to forget yourself and your house and all the stuff that waits there for you to fix it or do it or change it.

Grief is weird, but I'm learning all the time. And if you get a chance, go to the Georgia Aquarium, damning the cost, because it is worth it, and more than worth it. No, they do not pay me to say stuff like that, but they should.