Grieving in the face of life

My cousin passed away on Saturday evening. He lived in Mexico, my Mom’s brother’s son and the very first one of our generation to die. Naturally, to say that I’ve been in shock has been an understatement. I felt numb for most of Saturday and Sunday, and when I wasn’t on the phone talking to my family, I spent the rest of the time grading my students’ papers, working on a research paper, preparing a keynote speech. The only ‘time to myself’ that I took was not to be on Twitter and Facebook. I declined a number of pitches for my blog for the same reason. I needed space and time.

And today, as I’ve spent most of today on campus dealing with students, working on a keynote speech and 2 workshops and checking some stuff on a paper that I am co-authoring, I realized that I have been grieving in the face of life. I lost a member of my family, yes, but the world didn’t stop. I have deadlines to comply with, workshops to speak at, research papers to submit and present, final student papers to grade. I would love to put a stop on the world, but I can’t because life has to go on and it has deadlines and I have to comply with them.

And I didn’t write this post to ask for comfort or to have any of my work commitments “taken away”. I’ll comply with my deadlines, with the stuff I have to deal with. Because life goes on. But the lesson has been imprinted in my brain indelibly. I will never again let my work commitments consume my life in such a way that I forget what is really most important: family and friends.