Grieving

Grieving  - What I have learned about the process over the years

At first, each wave of emotion is powerful, overwhelming and you are completely submerged. Tears rise up of their own volition, sometimes so violently they turn to a gagging breathlessness as grief engulfs your being. Everything is blackened out. You don't know if you'll ever breathe again. Later you will learn that this is sheer shock. The emotional pain translates to physical pain – headache, dry eyes, dehydration – all things you barely notice, if at all at first. Every normal task feels abnormal, like eating, using the bathroom, or talking, and everything blurs together in a haze, a weird mix of intense emotion and the dullness that remains once a wave subsides. It feels like you will never be happy again, but mundane tasks keep you going for those first few days or weeks. Because it hurts so much, you might even try to stop thinking about it – a natural defense, and a much-needed momentary break – but that wave will always come crashing in. Let it. Eventually the swells die down in frequency and intensity, with each wave hitting more softly and ebbing more quickly.

Grieving is incredibly personal, but at the same time, it can be shared to some degree with those who were also close to the person lost. It feels strange to laugh, in between the swells of grief, but good memories come up and if the person who was lost had a good relationship with you, you don't mind laughing because you want to honor their memory with goodness, too. You might even feel a little happy to see all the family and friends that came to honor your lost loved one.

Grieving is being sad for all the memories you won't make with them anymore, sadness that your journey with that person is over, sadness over a future lost. It can also involve self-pity, feeling sad that you are sad, as well as anger and confusion, and later on, jealousy of others who still have their sister, mother, brother, father. Regret might also play a role in grief, even when the person who died had an overall positive relationship with you. And there is no good question to the answer “Why?”

Grief changes you forever. There is a depth etched into your soul from that wound, from that loss, and no one will ever be able to fill that hole in this life, because there is no one exactly like that person you lost, no relationship that can – or even should – completely replace it. With that wound there is an added sensitivity to loss and sadness, even imagined loss, and it leaves you wobbly the same way staying in water for a long time can make your legs feel like they are in moving water, even long after they are dry. Later on this will make you a better friend to those who also go through loss.

Eventually you start to notice people with those attributes from the person you lost, and you realize there is still that goodness in the world, albeit not wrapped up in the package that was the person who died. And there will be a search for a way to deal with that sadness etched into your soul, for the times a swell rises up after a long, long absence of grief-like feelings. There might even be a sense of obligation or dedication to always feel a little sad, to continue to miss that person no matter how many years go by, because you always want them to be a part of your life. There are many good ways to honor someone's memory. It might even serve as a way to allow you to grieve in the future, because all feelings need the chance to be felt. It makes you human. It makes you sane. Just don't hold it in.