I imagine most people in mourning know what triggers are. Those are the things that remind you of your pain, make you feel like your loss happened just now. Triggers open the door, bypass all defenses, and confront you with the full force of your pain. When I had just lost my baby, her blanket triggered a sobbing fit. Pictures, especially the ones I didn't see often, had me curling up in a ball. Words, items, anything at all can rip off the emotional scabbing built up to protect you from feeling.
This week, it was her song. I fell in love with the first Josh Groban song I'd ever heard, "To Where You Are." Unless I'm in the mood to cry, I can't listen to it at all anymore because it became tied to my pain. It's a direct, visceral time warp. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what is going on. If that song comes on, six years have not past. I'm there. I'm feeling that pain as if it were yesterday, and the tears are streaming down my cheeks. That's just how it works with triggers.
When my loss was new, I was surrounded by triggers. Almost everything was a trigger when everything around me reminded me of the day before or the week before when I still held my baby in my arms. It seemed wrong that the world marched forward normally, that the walls and the floor and the furniture were exactly the same as they were before my arms became empty. Now, so many years in the future, there are few physical reminders around of my baby, and the ones that I have are those I've seen so often, I have emotional scabs against them, too. They are rarely triggers anymore. But when her song comes on, I'm there and then again.
On one hand, I don't like triggers. I don't want to cry without warning. On the other hand, are they such a bad thing? Mourning is healthy. Forgetting or blocking the one we have lost out of our world entirely can lead to festering pain and a bigger emotional explosion when it comes. It's okay to let ourselves feel, if only for a little while. Triggers are okay. We all need triggers, which is why they exist in the first place, as an outlet for our bottled up pain. It's just easier when we don't hit them very often.
