While we would like grief to be a sprint, so that we could get to the end of the thing and return to whatever we have left of a normal life, often it feels like we’re slogging through a muddy field.
I like the oasis-to-oasis image for grief’s migration, of struggling through a hot, dry desert to reach one oasis, where we cool down and recover from the last segment of the journey. Then it’s back into the desert where we struggle with something new until we reach the next oasis.
Recently, a new image caught my attention - the crumpled wave. The image comes from mathematics. When you crumple a piece of paper, creases appear that relieve the stress on the sheet. It turns out that the total length of these creases accrues logarithmically as you repeatedly compact and unfold the sheet of paper.
On any day when we’re grieving, life can crumple in on us, and it feels like it’s too much to endure. Each time we are crumpled, we tend to crease in the same places. The more times we are crumpled in grief, the more we discover habits that help us release the stress. We learn, for example, that when we begin to fall into a funk, we can go for a walk in nature, or go out for coffee and scones with butter and jam. We straighten ourselves out enough that we can breathe again. The creases, of course, will remain. They become part of who we are.
Sometimes, though, we need the hands of friends to smooth our creases out. Let them.
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