It’s been about a month since I last wrote a post for Eco Friendly Mama. And as you can tell from the title, this is going to be a heavy one.

One month ago yesterday, my animated and always smiling father-in-law passed away. He had been battling cancer for about three years, so we knew his health was declining. But perhaps it was a bit of collective denial that we didn’t think the Big C would beat his indomitable spirit. Or perhaps death by cancer just doesn’t always happen the way you hear about it from movies and books. In the end it wasn’t even cancer that got him exactly, but a secondary health issue that came on unexpectedly and swiftly (though at the same time this was all unfolding time seemed to stop).

Within 48 hours of entering the hospital, he was gone.

Grief is something so personal and difficult to put into words. I’m really not even sure how to talk about it here. What I want to say is that, though I’ve lost loved ones before, this time felt very different.

Over the past month, I have grieved the loss of a dear person in my life. Out of everyone in my family and circle of friends, he was the most consistent cheerleader for my Eco Friendly Mama writing efforts. He subscribed to the weekly email, read every new post, and often left a comment about them on the site. The man couldn’t quite figure out how to use Facebook, but he figured out how to leave an encouraging comment on my posts because he knew how much it meant to me! Among the many things I will miss about him, seeing his name in my comments section is one of them. He was special and unique, and my grief for his loss is special and unique to him.

But now as a wife and mother, I also have to kind of put my grief aside to help my husband and my children grieve as well.

Telling my children that their beloved Papa was terminally ill one day, and then gone the next day, was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. To control my own emotions so that I could be strong for them and provide comfort amongst the massive sea change happening around them was a challenge that no parenting book had prepared me for. (That said, I was able to get some in-the-moment advice from a friend who is a grief counselor, Melissa Fisher Goldman LCSW, which was helpful. If you are going through something similar right now, I highly recommend reaching out to her or another therapist who specializes in loss and grief).

And then to see my husband, a pillar of emotional strength and my partner in all things, experiencing his own grief…I felt drained and yet still wished I could bleed myself dry to give him every drop of support if it helps ease his own pain.

The past few weeks have been a blur to say the least.

The aftermath of a parent’s passing leaves an emotional wake with multiple waves and ripples. Not only do you feel their absence so sharply, but you also likely have to take on the painful duties of sorting through what remains from their life – physically, financially, and emotionally. On top of it all, my husband (being the eldest and also living in closest proximity) got passed down some ongoing responsibilities that add to his already overflowing schedule. To say we both haven’t been sleeping well or sleeping enough is a serious understatement.

And yet life goes on when you’ve got young children.

Though I wish I could’ve crawled into a cave and cried for week straight, I still had responsibilities to my family. They still need to get fed every day, go to school, take a bath…all the normal life stuff that already keeps our days busy. And yet I’m exhausted, my husband is exhausted, and we are just trying to make it through a day without crumbling from the overwhelming weight of sadness.

So, we’ve been eating a lot of take out instead of our usual home-cooked meals, because I just haven’t had the energy. I put our CSA box on hold because the beautiful organic veggies and fruits were rotting in the fridge before we could consume them. And my brain has been in such a fog that I’ve been forgetting to bring my metal straws out with me about half the time.

I’m confessing this to you here because it is honest and this is real life.

What I want to say here is, I think that is okay. It’s okay to not be perfectly eco-conscious at every moment of every single day. My mission statement for Eco Friendly Mama is to help others find easy and fun ways to live a more sustainable life.

And I recognize that it can seem challenging to live a greener lifestyle, especially in the US, when it sometimes feels like everything about the culture around you is geared towards convenience and disposability. You can’t just wake up one day being fully zero waste after all; It’s a process and an evolution.

So, similar to a diet, sometimes you need a “cheat day” in your quest to be kinder to the planet.

That doesn’t mean if you fall off the wagon you’ve totally ruined your efforts and should give up completely. Or that you’re a hypocrite because you fell back into the convenient embrace of disposable culture in a desperate time of need. It just means that if you have to make a decision between dissolving into a puddle of tears or treating yourself to your favorite boba tea using a plastic straw, then choose your own sanity.

Just keep moving forward, just keep trying every day.

When my father-in-law died, I felt my own mortality so deeply and truly wondered what this – meaning the minutia of life – is all for. Why am I working so hard to be eco-friendly when I could instead be living an easy life of consumption? Think of all the time in my day that I’d save not sorting my recycling, not reading labels, not washing my reusable sandwich bags, not researching green toys for my kids, not…not…not!

And then I realized that the reason why I made this commitment to live a more eco-friendly life in the first place is the same motivator that keeps me waking up every morning and moving forward: my children. I want them to inherit a planet that’s not overrun with pollution, waste, and materialism. I’d like them to still have fish in the sea by the time they’re my age. They are worth the effort.

Humanity is worth the effort.

Now a month into life after my father-in-law’s death, sleep is slowly coming back. My focus is slowing coming back. My motivation is returning. I removed the CSA box hold and am back to meal planning. I am (mostly) remembering to bring my metal straws out with me. And I finally sat down to write something here.

I continue to mourn the loss of my website’s greatest fan. But, I’m squaring my shoulders into the wind and moving forward again. And I hope, somewhere, he’s reading this post and smiling.

 

• death
• grief