Grief and Emotions

When grief hits, we are pummeled by a range of emotions. We never knew we could feel so much, endure so much, or rage for hours until we were exhausted. Grief unleashes a barrage of emotions that short circuits our mind and leaves us sobbing on the floor. 

Inherited Grief

Book – Elizabeth Rosner, Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory

In her insightful and far-reaching book, Survivor Café, Elizabeth Rosner, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, writes about her search to understand her parents’ grief and its continuing impact on her family. 

The Worst Grief

Sometimes when we’re feeling bitten hard by grief, or just snarky, we try to prove that we are hurting the most, and that our grief is the worst that anyone has ever experienced. In the entire world. Ever.

I’ve lost a wife in her 40s, three beloved pets (well, one not so beloved), both parents (one to dementia), all my grandparents, a pair of in-laws, a friend to AIDS, two to murder, several to cancer, one to suicide, and a number of young friends to car accidents. As I walk among the tombstones in my personal cemetery, it would be hard to put them on a scale of the worst because they each hit me hard in different ways.

Three Sequoia Cones

In the early morning light, held tightly inside by the death of someone I loved, I sit on a log in the transparency of the sun. In the vibrancy of fresh air. In the clarity of the mountains. The trauma of death has shaken me.

            I think about my failings — working too long on tasks and not spending enough time with Ev. Not loving freely from the heart. Not slowing down often enough to be present to the suffering of others. This is who I’ve been.