G is for Grief

I’ve been stuck on this topic for awhile. What follows isn’t so much the typical essay that has been the format of most of my lexicology posts, but instead, a conversation with myself. Understandably so, I’ve been hung up on this word—grief—for awhile now. But as I’ve discovered, it is okay to both hold onto grief and to keep moving at the same time.

If you found this, it isn’t on accident. You and I need to be in conversation regarding a lesson I’ve learned (the hard, long way) over the last three years: there is a life to live on the other side of grief. Shit, that sounds like the title of a real cheesy TED talk, doesn’t it?  But it is true. Your life will now and forever be a bit cleaved, divided into The Before and The After, but The After, ever patient, lays in wait. 

“Well, what if I don’t want The After?  The Before was beautiful and golden. I’ll take that again, please.” 

Try as you might, and trust me, YOU WILL TRY, it is absolutely impossible to replicate The Before 100%.  It will always feel like a facsimile of “the good times,” and not the times themselves. So you could busy yourself in your attempts to recreate a cardboard cutout life, but I don’t at all recommend it.  The slightest breeze will topple everything you’ve painstakingly tried to reconstruct, and you’ll spend the majority of your time trying to put it back together. 

“Fine, you’re right. I can’t live like that. But what about the pain? How do I get rid of the pain?”

To try to rid yourself of the pain is impossible. Moreover, it’ll be a cheap move—all you will ever do is temporarily anesthetize it. There’s no amount of Stoli, or Marlboros, or Tik Tok, or Chick-fil-a or whatever else name-brand balm you indulge in that could ever remove it. I hate to be a dick about it, but on this point, I have to be especially firm.  You will never, ever be able to use one of those outside sources as a way to discard your feelings. Far be it from me to begrudge you a bit of relief, whatever your vice (and we all have vices, let’s talk about that later). But this is a locked-room mystery, folks. You are sitting on the couch with the culprit, and there’s no key to leave. A couple of G&T’s might take the edge off of your cohabitation, but when you wake up in the morning, the two of you will still be bedfellows.

“Makes sense. But then what do I DO? Your promise of life on the other side of all this is pretty bleak.” 

I’m going out on a limb here—but it is precisely because of the ever-present pain, the disgusting, all-encompassing ache of your loss, that somehow…The After is going to be more. The After is more precisely because of the grief, what it revealed to you in its arrival and subsequent, permanent kinship. In your coupling with grief, I’m sure you’ve seen things. Dark and amorphous things, biggest fears things, the worst things you’ve seen in your life. Don’t take those things lightly, and whatever you do, do not turn away from them. Study your demons. Understand the implications.  Is The Wizard of Oz half as good without the technicolor reveal? Is life half as rich if you don’t quite understand what there is to lose?

“Well, how do I do it, then? How do you both hold on to that pain, and also move on?”

Right, I haven’t made that clear.  You live with grief now.  The two of you are inseparable. Once you meet him, no matter the time—he is yours. Like any dutiful parent, you are, at first, going to need to attend to him sunup to sundown. He deserves all of your attention. Loud, unruly, and untamed, nascent Grief will dictate your days. You are a new mother, and he is a new entity. But, like any offspring, Grief will mature. He will grow—not in size, usually; that newborn is the loudest, most unforgiving creature you’ll ever meet. But Grief will gain independence. Eventually, it will allow you space. Finally, when you both are ready, you’ll need to build a room for it.  Please don’t wall it off, or doom it to a compartmentalized cubicle.  Craft a room with doors and windows. Adorn the space with memories of what you’ve lost, plaster it with pictures of the innumerable futures you never experienced.  Whatever you do, though, please, please—leave grief’s door open, just a crack. In this way, Grief feels honored and held, but we also have the space to be ourselves again. And to be frank, you do not want your grief to be jailed.  You’d then be robbing yourself of the one priceless gift that it delivers to each home it enters: perspective.    

Above all, there is a life to live on the other side. It is gorgeous and terrible, breathtaking and heartbreaking. But there is a life.