Grief is an disobedient entity. It does not know of boundaries or timelines. It does not care for working days or weekends. It does not arrive at the prescribed time, waiting its few mandatory days after shock and despair to enter stealthily through the door. It does not wrap you in its dark cape for the allotted or subscribed time you might have read about and so think ‘oh yes so now you are here and in x number of days you will be gone and I can move on’. It does not come when you are expecting it. It does not always come with death. We have many reasons to grieve and most of them we ignore.
Grief. It comes in the middle of the most perfect day. You have just taken a deep breath of pleasure, the sun is out and you can hear the delightful laughter of small children. What ever it was that was the cause of your grief was months, even years ago. Long forgotten. Dealt with, you thought, in the most efficient of ways. Packed down tightly, taped up and placed in a long forgotten corner of a cupboard never opened. Then there you are standing in line at the grocery store perched somewhere between the pretty little packets of nuts and the magazines depicting perfect homes and deliciously robust bodies and suddenly you hear a voice, or smell a scent and it hits you like a freight train. Right there, out of the blue it hits you. It was there all along. A tiny ember barely alight somewhere deep within you glowing so quietly you could not even hear it’s whisper. Then a memory, a sight or sound opens the door just enough to provide oxygen to that tiny cinder. You feel the heat rise up within you. Rushing and enveloping you. Overwhelming you. You are in the middle of the line at the supermarket and all of a sudden you feel your world fall apart.
It comes in a dream and when you wake the day does not caress you with it’s normal sweet and charming hello. You open your eyes to crashing waves of every unwanted and unwelcome emotion. Immediate thoughts of ‘I cannot do this day’ engulf your both your mind and every pore from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. We are who we are though and we get up and tape down that box and carry on. We shut the door and hope the cinder dies down. No oxygen, no fire.
Then there you are in line at the supermarket and the heat rises and your eyes fill with tears. You cry at the checkout and you wipe your eyes at the parking exit. You stop your car in a random spot in some side street and are engulfed in great heaving sobs that tear you apart. Once it comes its unstoppable and the pain it seems is unbearable. That fire will burn and the only thing to eventually put it out will be your own tears. You can’t can keep closing that door and trying to put out the flames, it will never work. It will come again and again at all those unexpected times until you finally deal with it.
Thats grief. It’s unexplainable and although it is not always related to the death of a person it usually involves loss of some kind. There are many reasons to grieve. It can be the loss of a place. The breakdown of a friendship. The deep hurt from betrayal. The pain of something that never was when you so desperately wanted it to be. The bottomless despair that comes with the realisation that things are not how you thought they would be. The loss of a future you thought you would have.
When it comes it might be because of all these things. There is nothing to do but go with it. Pull over at the side of that road and cry those tears. Stay in bed and refuse to do the day. Open the door and let out that whole lifetime of piled up emotion. Maybe, just maybe then you can start to heal.
nikivanvelden 