I made a friend this summer. A friend I can count on to never leave me. A friend that shows me love. A friend that keeps me connected to my favorite person in the world. A friend that shows up without warning and stays over way too long. My friend's name is "grief" and I hope you haven't met. If you have, you may have met a very different grief than me. Let me introduce you to the grief that found me.
Where do I even begin? Good grief! Wait, that's an oxymoron, or is it? I think that is an ongoing question I will continue to navigate through. What did I find out about grief early on? Let's be real, I am still "early on" at this point-about 5 months out.
It is different for everyone-Everyone will experience and respond to loss differently. Many people around me did not understand and it got frustrating and even made me angry. Not even a month after my dad died, I had people telling me I shouldn't be crying and should be out doing stuff. This just added to my feelings of isolation and disconnection.
It will not get better, but we learn to cope better-This was the hardest phrase for me to hear. It was also one of the most helpful. Prior to my dad dying, most of what I heard was "it gets better with time." That's just not the whole story or entirely accurate. It felt like a punch to the gut when I first had someone say "it will never get better." But it helped prepare me early on for some hard fought battles and changed my expectations.
Healing is not linear- We don't hit these "stages of grief"(I use the term loosely) in an ordered way. We don't get to put a check mark by denial and then proceed to the next stage never to look back. It's not a game to see how fast we can get to the next level. I still have a hard time grasping that there is no defined endpoint. There is no place where I know I will find rest if I just get to _______.
Therapy makes a difference- This may not be a necessary step for everyone. Some people do not need it to navigate their experience. I knew early on I would need to go to therapy. I was already in a low from a really tough break up (a significant loss) and then I watched my favorite person in the entire world while he was dying in front of me. People kept telling me I had been through a trauma. I had seen enough on social media to know how dangerous a place grief could be. I called for an appointment a week after my dad died. I was asked why I came to therapy. My answer- "I don't want to wind up in a dark place."
Grief will never leave me. We are forever changed by significant loss. I read that losing a parent is "wholly transformative". This picture is the last picture I have of myself before everything changed. I am not that person anymore. Now I have to choose who I become but I will always have a place for grief. Grief shows me love. "But what is grief, if not love persevering?" No, I haven't watched WandaVision but I did connect with that quote. This all hurts so much because my dad loved me and was always there for me. Grief keeps me connected to my dad. Grief motivates me to show up for my dad, to strive to be the person he raised me to be. My dad loved well and was well loved. I cannot let his death defeat me. I am not talking about those first waves of grief. The ones that are all consuming, suffocating, relentless, isolating, hopeless, and painful. That's a different kind of beast. I am talking when I finally found my breath and had enough space to breathe in and breathe out. Grief shows up at the obvious times but also at random times. I started crying looking at toilet paper in his bathroom. Toilet paper? Really? Yep. I saw the extra rolls and thought of all the ways he provided for us and how those are the last rolls he bought. I broke down at a gas station. I got out to pump my gas. My dad didn't always pump my gas for me but he often found a reason to do it. It was usually "you've been running me all around town. I'll pump your gas for you." Sometimes he'd jokingly moan and groan when I'd stop at the gas station and say "ohhh, so this is the reason you brought me along." What he was always saying in those times was "I love you."
टिप्पणियां