Acceptance is an Illusion

I am participating in a Grief Share support group to help me map this insane mind screw called grief.  It has helped me so much make sense of the crazy in this Valley of the Shadow of Death.  As I toddled through my brain tonight, listening, attempting to link the fragments of my heart and mind to the truth that I know is there…acceptance reared it's ugly head.  Acceptance.  A.C.C.E.P.T.A.N.C.E.  Huh.  ?  

Well, let's see. Once, maybe not so long ago, when people died, that was it.  They were dead. Gone.  You didn't ever hear their voice again or see them moving around. There was no lingering of their essence to confuse the brain. All you had left were memories that faded with time and a dent in your heart where their name was etched. It was definitive.  There was an end…a point to accept. But today...
I have videos, voicemails, pictures, Facebook, YouTube, and a variety of other mediums to keep him very much alive.  It's how millions of people every year fall in love with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.  Sure, there is no new record or movie.  There isn't anything new to talk about…but the acceptance never really has to settle in because we have kept them alive through recordings.  Sure, Jay wasn't famous and most people will never care about him but our quite substantially large family, but accepting that he is never going to been seen this side of heaven is hard.  I will occasionally check his Facebook…nothing new.  Check my voicemails…nothing new.  I am thankful for those relics…I think. It can make the loss seem not so far away.  It can make "acceptance" more of a variable than an absolute. Time will keep moving on and there will never be any new to Jay.  He will always be 38 and too young to be dead. But more than anything, I hope that one day, I can delete, erase or let go of some of these things that keep him alive.  Not because I have quit missing him or him loving his babies, but because I will have accepted that he is, indeed, dead. Gone.  It is a gift and a curse to be able to have so much recorded of our loved ones.  The gift is that they are alive in the memory and the curse is that they are alive in the memory even in death (I am not referring to a spiritual issue). I have accepted that I am no longer married.  I have accepted that things have changed.  I have accepted that he is dead…I think.