Getting Personal with Grief

How we think about grief depends upon whether we’ve lost someone close, and lived inside the Theatre of the Absurd for a time, or we’re still standing on the street trying to look cool, wanting, not wanting, to peek in.

 

We can observe someone hunched over, sobbing with emotion, hands clenching and unclenching, face wet with tears, and know how grief looks and sounds.

 

We can classify grief as a species, study its genetics and genomes, and observe how it interweaves with other species like anger, despair, love, guilt, loneliness, rage, depression, saudade, and hope.

 

We can talk about grief as a philosophical concept, especially existentialism because our personal existence no longer seems to have any meaning or purpose, and we wander around mumbling illogical phrases that confuse even us.

 

We can study grief as a cultural phenomenon and gather information on how different societies deal with the death of their members, and how they help, and hinder, the restoration of the grieving to a sense of wellbeing. 

 

We can read the ancient mythologies and learn how people in prescientific times described their fears of death and dying, and shaped their conclusions and wisdom into landscapes of metaphors, deities, and epic love stories of struggle and hope.

 

We can divide grief into different psychological types of personal loss—spouse, parent, sibling, child, stillbirth, friend, pet—and discuss how secondary losses and conflicted relationships compound the difficulties of each one.

 

But when we grieve, everything becomes personal.

 

Grief is no longer what happens to other people. It will walk alongside us for the rest of our days, and connect us to every other grieving person. When we grieve, our entire orientation to the world shifts, and what we expect out of friendships deepens.

 

Grief is not an abstract concept to grasp or a puzzle to figure out. It’s a journey through the heart that will pull on every emotion we’ve ever felt, and leave us standing in the darkness wondering how we are going to weave them together.

 

We can defuse, negate, and analyze our grief so completely that while we come to understand exactly what is happening to us and why, we lose contact with our feelings and zest for life.

 

In trying to understand our grief and explain it to others, we tumble through grief’s linguistic gymnasium, contorting the syntax of language to find words and create the phrases capable of expressing the complexities of death’s trauma.

 

Death is not the thing with feathers. Death comes bearing bricks, which is why having a caring community around us is so important. When grief arrives, we need to develop a relationship with it because grief is going to be our guide.

 

If we give ourselves over to the movement of grief’s ocean, and surrender our control to the rhythm of its tide, we will come to understand the wisdom of its pacing. 

 

Grief is noun and verb. It is the thing itself and the thing we can never adequately describe.

 

As we converse with grief, it becomes an intimate friend. We develop an I-Thou relationship of sharing, listening, and trust. 

 

If we are honest with ourselves and face grief with courage, if we accept the reality that everyone who loves will lose someone close and grieve, if we are humble, set aside our pride, and allow others to help us, then we will understand the importance of compassion, and experience community, gratitude, and grace. 

 

All hearts are wounded and bruised by events that happen in life. Many of us have suffered the loss of someone we never expected to be without. This is the great and terrible wonder of life—that there will be love and there will be sorrow—and without experiencing both, we won’t know the depth or beauty of either one.