The Complexities of Grief

It is almost 11 weeks now, since I sat with my brother-in-law, holding my sister’s hand, as she slipped away, after an intense and brave battle with a cancer that wouldn’t let go.   We have reached that point where life returns to normal for everyone else, while we wobble and teeter, trying our hardest to find a new ‘normal’ that feels nothing like normality at all.  Walking through treacle and wading in waste-high mud are the only clichéd analogies that can half-represent how some days feel, how even the ordinary things – the school run, a pile of washing up, a social occasion – can feel like it takes every ounce of strength to face.

What does grief really look like?  How should it look?  In the times we live in, a lot is understood about grief.  Psychologists have researched it, books have been written about it, counsellors are trained to help people talk about it and move through it well.  We recognise the truth that no two people experience grief in the same way – but there is something deep within, when you’re walking through grief, that wants others to ‘get it’ – to fully understand how it feels, where it rips you in two, how it abates and when and why it comes roaring back again.

It takes on so many facets, each day different to the one that has gone before.  On a ‘going-to-plan’ day, you can find your balance, momentarily.  Any extra crisis that rears up, major or minor, can tip you off balance, back into a frightening pit.  That is the awkward thing about the world of the grieving – it doesn’t stop turning and demanding things from you.  You might want to block it all out and stop for a while, take a break, get off, opt out – but there are still meals to cook, spellings to practise with the children, sporting events that need you to be there to cheer for, lines to be learnt for the school nativity.  Bigger than that, if there is stress at work, children’s illnesses, and serious health problems of family far away, the feeling that everything is hopeless and ‘I’m-not sure-I-can-take-one-more-thing’ endless, stalks, ready to topple your best efforts at one-foot-in-front-of-the-other.

So here is my current take – some of the things my grief has looked like, over the course of eleven short weeks - my own road through grief.  Most of it can’t be analysed, contained or quantified, but here are some snippets, some insights.  Perhaps by reading them, you’ll understand my grief better.  Perhaps by reading them, some of it will resonate and help you to walk through yours.

It has presented itself in nightmares, about snakes and death and stolen cars, so real, that, even on waking abruptly, the feelings don’t end.  Worse, dreaming of her, waking to the painful reality.

It has appeared, suddenly, in the day to day, while teaching a poem or play I have taught twelve times before.  The scenes of death, the memories, suddenly overwhelming parts of me they didn’t touch before, making me swallow hard, hoping my too-fast-beating heart isn’t showing in my face.

It has been the face of smiling pictures on my niece’s birthday, six days on, from the night her world changed.  Candles and cake, presents and smiles, all of us holding it together for her special day and all of us (probably – we don’t always say), going our separate ways to collapse with the enormity of the ‘it’s-too-hard’ feeling that had been lurking, all day, in the shadows.

It has been the delighted smile of a growing baby, so pleased with himself that he can crawl and clap and stand and wave.  The overwhelming feeling of delight in him and love for him and the flooring thoughts that follow, of the missing person, who would have enjoyed it all the most.

It comes at the end of long, tiring days, where things have gone quite well, and I share a thought out loud about something I would have sent or said or shared with her, and the tears well up and cascade down my face again, reminding me how fresh the wound is still.

It has come as I’ve tried to decide whether to go to social occasions, knowing that a change of scenery will help but that conversation is beyond me and darkness lurks too close to really want to be around people - but knowing that being around people might help the shadows disperse.

It has come at church, when the song I am singing or the prayer someone is praying seems so far removed from the agonising questions tormenting my soul.  And I cry and breathe and someone hugs me and prays and something lifts, despite my internal wrangling and wrestling.

It has looked, too, like making soup or mince pies in the kitchen and catching myself humming and feeling momentary peace – dare I admit it, even happiness?  But beneath it, the bindweed tightens, the guilt grips and I know it won’t last and there’s more pain to come – so much more – before I find my way out of this cloying darkness.

It lurks in the frustration when my head and heart aren’t in sync.  I pep-talk myself that it ‘won’t always feel like this,’ that ‘I’ll make it through, somehow,’ and ‘just have to keep on plodding,’ but some days the pep-talk ricochets off the walls and lands somewhere else and I have to make friends with the darkness and wait for the next glimmer of light to break through, as I know it will.

A thousand twinges of pain and grief have passed through my heart and mind in the seventy-five turns of the earth since she left it, so many more than I can begin to record here.  Thank you for reading this far and living with me the few small snippets I have shared.  Grief will continue to rock my world as I learn to live with it – unfortunately, as the saying goes, the only way out is right on through.  In the harder moments, I hold to two things – one is a quote from Corrie Ten Boom, a Nazi concentration camp survivor that “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”  If she could endure all the things she did and come out still saying that, so can I.  And finally, my favourite Bible verse of advent: “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”  As I face the darkness of my life’s circumstances, I will continue to trust with all my might, the truth that His light will, somehow, illuminate my stumbling steps on the shadowy path ahead.