When asked to write about my experience with grief and loss I was immediately willing to share my familiarity with the topic. I sat down to compile my thoughts expecting oodles of ideas to emerge. Instead days passed as I sat here laptop open with nothing to write. Each day I would ponder the topic of grief but my mind would wander to my grocery list, work issues, the recent release of the Sex and the City movie. It seemed everything but grief was demanding my attention.

So, being the queen of procrastination that I am, I postponed writing to the next day. Then the next day. Then the next day. Each day came and left and still nothing surfaced. My mother died of breast cancer when I was 19 so grief has been a part of my life for the last 14 years. Surely (I thought to myself) I must have something to say about it!?

And then it hit me. My plan was to write about how my relationship with grief had evolved as I journeyed through womanhood. But before I could delve into this topic I was reminded, by the example of my own procrastination, that my relationship with grief has been rather aloof. Ok, I plain avoid it.

I don’t avoid it on purpose really. It's just that grief lingers in the corners of my life. A silent backdrop to my every day. My mother died yet life has gone on and the urgency grief once held has subsided. But still it remains. Like a dust bunny under the sofa, I know it's there. Gradually growing the longer it is neglected. Fragile enough that a subtle nudge could dislodge it into the open. Still, I avoid its existence.

I’m content to leave it in the shadows. But what I have come to realize in this relationship is grief requires I make time for it. I have to make space for it in my life because it is not going anywhere.  So though I don’t have the energy for it every day from time to time I pull out the sofa and tackle those bunnies.

What I thought was silence when I sat down to write this was actually my own avoidance. I was avoiding the emotional work grief demands. I sat down to think about how my grief had evolved when in reality what I needed to do was sit down and feel how my grief had evolved.

Currently, whenever I have to confront grief, the first thing I do is pamper myself. So, yesterday I made a trip to the spa and welcomed grief in for a short visit as I pondered my original question of how my relationship to grief has evolved.

I’ve now been living without my mother for almost as long as I lived with her in my life. Fourteen years have passed and I feel like I have lived an entire lifetime without her. My life had taken on a B.D. and A.D. quality. Meaning my mother’s death has become the indicator for how all events in my life gain their distinction, having either occurred “before her death” (B.D) or “after her death” (A.D).

However, it wasn’t always like this. During the first few years after her death the impact was tremendous. My whole life seemed to revolve around the loss. I read the one book I had on grief over and over. I wrote in my journal. I created ways to memorialize my mother. This was when grief and I first became acquainted and we did everything together.

Then a few years passed and things evolved slightly. The belief that life is short was now real for me. I decided I had to live life not now but right now. I became almost obsessed with having meaningful life experiences. I traveled the world in search of these moments. Yet, as I traveled from city to city, country to country an underlying quest was lurking. It was as if I was seeking something I could not identify.

A few more years went by and I thought the feeling would subside. Yet even today, I continue to experience times where I find a subtle yet inexplicable yearning for something I cannot pinpoint, and the compulsion to search for something I cannot name. I now know these are moments where life has propelled my subconscious to reach out for a mother. My mother. And although I know I won’t find her, the search leaves me feeling strangely lost and disoriented.

As the 10-year anniversary of my mother’s death emerged grief ventured out of its corner. So with grief standing firmly in front of me I decided to channel it in a new way. Resources were so difficult to find when I lost my mother and although better today, are still limited. So I decided to create a media program (supported by a web portal) to support young people who had lost a loved one. For eight weeks young people came together to learn film basics and by the end of the program they had all shot their own short film expressing their experience with grief and loss.

My hope for those who were able to participate in the program was that they would be better able to access their grief. That focusing on it from a cinematic perspective would allow them to not only explore their loss but encourage them to confront rather than avoid their grief.

A paradox, I know, since I am of course quite comfortable with avoidance myself. Four more years have passed since then and I don’t know that I can say my avoidance has subsided. The irony of course is that after I pull out the proverbial sofa to address those grief dust bunnies, the result is a fresh, new, clean space. Grief hasn’t left. I’ve just made it more comfortable. And creating that program and sharing my story in a forum such as this are ways in which time for grief has been created I’ve been able to look grief in the eye and accept its presence. For now, the space under the sofa is clear and grief is snoozing in the corner of my life. I will avoid waking it for awhile. At least until the next spring clean.

Katrina Lopes