Grief Is Disrespectful

Grief is so disrespectful. It hits you like a wrecking ball.  No respect for you, your schedule, plans or relationships. It comes in waves and threatens to drown you. One minute you’re coasting because time has passed, and the next thing you know, you’re under water. Triggers everywhere. You find it difficult to laugh or enjoy a night out without feeling guilty. There is no template for you to follow to determine if you’re grieving properly – there is no wrong or right way to do it. You don’t get to divorce it; grief becomes a constant companion.

Just a few days ago, someone I loved died. She was a member of my immediate family; her death came as an uninvited interruption. My husband and I were traveling when we got the call. For what seemed like an eternity, we just sat on the side of the road in utter shock and devastation. What was deeply troubling, and still is, is the reality that she will never exist again—not in the same form. Some believe she has gone to another world; some believe she now exists as particles, but the reality is her shape, the twinkle in her eyes, and her sweet spirit will never exist, as we have known it, again.

How can she no longer exist? How can she not call, talk to or hug us anymore within the space of a day?

Grief is the internal part of loss, how we feel. The inside work of grief is a process, a journey. It does not end on a certain day or date. It is as individual as each of us. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and unique as the person we lost. Grief is complex and not at all a straightforward process. It takes time to rebuild and recalibrate, while simultaneously learning how to honor what was lost. The loss happens in time, in fact in a moment, but the aftermath lasts a lifetime.

Again, grief comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and magnificence of the ship that was but is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage, and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s a physical thing. Perhaps, it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is breathe and float. Keep your head above the water…stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on. After a while, maybe weeks, possibly months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be almost anything…and the waves come crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you will find the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, holiday, or a vacation spot. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, trembling, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Grief is just plain ole disrespectful. It takes a toll on you physically and emotionally. Holidays are never the same after someone we love dies. Even small aspects of a birthday or Christmas celebration — an empty seat at the dinner table, one less gift to buy — can serve as jarring reminders of how our lives have been forever changed. Although grief is described in phases or stages, it may feel more like a roller coaster, with ups and downs. This can make it hard for the bereaved person to feel any sense of progress in dealing with the loss. A person may feel better for a while, only to become sad again.

Grief is not a simple matter of missing someone or feeling down. It is a seemingly unending spiral of every emotion imaginable. Underlying all those emotions is a great yearning to see our loved one just one more time, a longing for one more smile, one more word. This yearning over time is often manageable; other times it shoots through us like a fountain bursting out of calm waters.

Grief is a thing of the spirit, affecting every part of our lives. It’s not just a matter of the person being dead, but also all hopes, dreams, plans, expectations that we had with them. If there was a misunderstanding of any kind, it can never be put right. Grief changes our perception of self, our sense of our place in the world. Grief affects our self-esteem. We question, both as a need to know why and as a cry of pain. We may lose or gain faith. Either way, we are rocked to the very depths of our being.

Grief is also physical. We suffer many physical symptoms, such as queasiness, dizziness, sleep problems (too much or too little), eating problems (too much or too little), bone-deep pain. The inability to breathe or swallow, exhaustion, lack of energy, inability to concentrate, restlessness, back and neck aches, and seemingly endless bouts of tears. Our brain chemistry changes, and often we suffer from stress-related issues. In our case, losing a daughter seems to rank at the very top of stressful situations, and that stress itself can cause physiological changes. Parents are not supposed to bury their children. It is against the natural order of life.

Grief is disrespectful. It is something humans are not equipped to handle, so we mourn. Often, we don’t feel the spiritual angle, instead, we feel as if part of us has been amputated. We feel the weight of their absence. We feel unsteady. The world itself feels off balance. Although we know they are gone from this earth, we search for them in crowds and in our dreams. We know we won’t find them. This searching isn’t a mental divergence, and it certainly isn’t denial. It’s simply a way to cope with the unthinkable.

How can our loved ones be gone so completely? It’s the absence that bewilders us, pains us. As the search for our lost one diminishes, we begin searching for ourselves, for our place in this new, unthinkable world. Grief has the power to change the brain, but it can also force immense growth in resilience if memories are processed and stored in healthy ways. I’m learning:

When people I love no longer exist, I have the perfect opportunity to reflect on how I can integrate the best parts of them into my life.

When you care for someone who is going through the terrible process of losing someone, it is more about listening to them and seeing where they are in the process than it is about trying to make them feel better. The point is not to cheer them up. The point is to be with them, love them, and let them know that you can imagine a future for them where they’re not constantly being knocked over by the waves of grief.

The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. The truth is, it’s amazing that any of us manage to find our way through the pain to a semblance of peace, through the horror of death to a renaissance of life, but we do. Loss may be a part of life, but grief is just outright disrespectful.

Opinion by Cherese Jackson (Virginia)

Image Credits:

Top Image Courtesy Liza Summer’s Pexels Page – Creative Commons License
First Inline Image Courtesy By_Jo’s Pexels Page – Creative Commons License
Second Inline / Featured Image Courtesy of Alex Green’s Pexels Page – Creative Commons License