What is different, in GRIEF?
Thoughts come and go all of the time to me and sometimes I write them out and other times I get too swamped in them to remember to write anything at all. Hey, that is life, I guess, right?
The subject of GRIEF and all that surrounds death & loss can be quite baffling to say the least. Those of you who are in the midst of grief or grieving right now can probably relate and yet the nature of grief and grieving had you thinking that perhaps nobody even understands what you are going through. The thoughts that surround you and the feelings that can seem overwhelming for you, these are all a part of grief they say and that is about as much of a consolation as we get.
There are indeed many ways to view this grief journey you find yourself on, I cannot stress enough the fact of MANY, MANY ways to view this thing called GRIEF as no two people will experience grief the same yet it is quite similar for everyone. And then again it is just not the same for anyone. Does that not explain it all right there? It can be as confusing as hell for anybody, so do not worry, you are not weird or strange or anything of the kind.
Imagine if you will, taking an autumn walk with a friend, it is slightly in the afternoon and the sun is still in the sky. A friend has asked to go for a walk together and off you go. You did however forget your sun glasses and will manage because it is autumn sun and not too glaring. You walk in the park and the leaves are falling. You see changes in the scenery due to the season of the year that it is. You chat and laugh and discuss with your friend as you walk, stopping for a quick coffee somewhere along the way. As you return to your starting point and now a little later in the evening, your friend removes their sun glasses and bids you farewell and you head your separate ways. Each of you fulfilled in your own way from your afternoon walk and coffee with a friend.
(Get to the point already Aidan.)
Ah yes!
Two of you have shared an afternoon together and saw the leaves falling and the changes in nature as you walked, your friend with sun glasses and you without. Do you think you both experienced the exact same thing? Your friend saw the autumn through a different lens, obviously and literally, you on the other hand had the raw, naked eye taking everything in. Two people who shared the same space for a little time together and yet two completely different experiences. All because of the lenses of a pair of sun glasses. Now let us imagine grief in a way where there can be many different lenses along our walk in life. Yes two people can share the same space and share the same experience in life and it really is a matter of what lens they are seeing things through to know if we can really relate to each other and know what it might feel like for the other person.
The strange element of grieving and a journey within grief is that the lenses are being applied by something else inside of us. I can wake in the morning and see a day as beautiful and be very grateful to be alive. I can wake on a day and see no beauty and wish to be elsewhere. Why so, I am not changing my sun glasses and I am not fitting any new lenses to view my day. I am just me and am simply somebody who has grieved for quite some time in my life, so why do the lenses keep changing and why are things so much different for those of us who know grief and those of who do not?
I do not ask for these lenses to be changed for me and I do not ask to be burdened or relieved in either case by the journey of grief. I have little to no control over where these feelings come from or how these tinted lenses of my view point come from. I or we rather, must get on with things and live to best of our capabilities and continue in an environment of life that sometimes is filled with a whole bunch of people who have no other lenses at all. We must understand how the world around us does not understand us, yet we must become the ones who understand. How does this even begin to scratch the surface of making anything easier or more tolerant on us? It does not, does it?
We get to have moments where we wish to take a 400 month vacation though we would settle for 10 seconds of the company of our loved one that we lost. We wish to see their face, we long to hear their voice and if only we could smell their scent for a little while. We might begin to have a tiny moment of joy in the middle of what feels like a never ending cycle of hurt and pain. Oh yes, how we wish for these things on a minute to minute basis sometimes.
So, I must understand that other people do not understand. This makes grief a raw deal altogether without the element of hurt and pain and sadness. I must become the better person in all that I do and all that I am faced with. How on earth does losing my children qualify me to become a better person in any situation? What club are we, those of us who grieve? The feelings are not enough to contend with? The thoughts are not enough to contend with? Why on earth did this journey become so difficult and complicated beyond my own understanding?
These may well be some of the questions you have asked yourself before in your own grief journey and I am simply voicing them to let you know that you are not the only one.
I do know that I can see things with great depth in my life now and my feelings have never been as fine tuned, this is for sure. The booby prize in the competition I guess. Though, in loss I have learned that I have been afforded some great beauty with all that has felt so heavy. I can see other people and understand them better now. I have gained depth beyond where I ever was. I only thought I knew what sadness was before and now being a bereaved father, I do feel it much deeper. The lenses chop and change all over the place and I cannot think straight at all, many times in one simple day. Though I have gained and I have grown and I have indeed learned of a new place in life. A plateau kind of, where I can be content, I can see more deeply and understand others and feel more deeply too.
My explanation for this has always been that when I had the horrific shock and traumas in my life that I was rattled to the core of my humanity. How would I or how did I ever find my way out of that deep, dark place? Basically to be honest, by feeling my feelings and by experiencing how I actually sad I felt. I have not shied away from them ever as I wanted to grow and find a way in which to rebuild myself. I am fully aware that not every body is the same and rebuilding might seem like light years away for you at this moment in time. I simply mention it because it is possible and sometimes it can be good to hear that the possibility exists, even if it may not happen for you for some years yet.
Ah yes my explainer is that when we were catapulted into this area of life that became a grieve journey, we more than likely experienced the deepest pain inside of ourselves that we had never imagined was possible. Would you agree? Click like at the bottom if you agree, would ya please, so that I can know that some of you do feel similar to me and I too am not alone on this journey.
Anyways, the feelings that we have experienced and especially those we believed before would not even be possible, yes those ones. We have felt them and we have cried perhaps and sobbed and then sobbed some more. What has happened in my life is that I experienced such devastation and have experienced such trauma that I did not realize how deep and far left field my feelings were being stretched. I never knew that we could get so low in life. By the same token though, my feeling capabilities were growing on the right side as well. The stretching is not one sided. I began to practice something which I did not know at the time which is called “mindfulness” to say my mind was full is an understatement. Full of bitterness and hurt and sadness, yes! I did not think straight for a single second. What I was unaware of though was that by taking a little time to sit in a moment I could enjoy micro seconds of life. I could taste my food and sit with it for a moment. I began to develop an ability to recognise that this precise moment might never happen again and so all the stretching that had taken place to bring me way, way down also stretched to the other side and there is a place where can laugh again. We can enjoy again and we can live the life of grief with multiple lenses of hurt and sadness and lenses now of great joy and beauty.
Why share with you?
I have had to encourage myself many times along my journey of dealing with the loss of my two sons and I know that I had wished some times for a little piece to cling to that might tell me I am going to be okay. I figured the best way to share these kinds of things is to write them out and allow the internet do its thing and find those who need to hear the words for right now. If you are one of those people, then do please share this post. We have no idea how many people need to hear things like this in the middle of a tough stage of grieving. Even though I said stage just now, I am not a believer in some text book format or formula for grief as if it follows some linear pattern and once we go through stages xyz through to abc, then we will be cured. Nah it has not happened like that for me and then again to revisit where we started this post, I know oh too well it is not the same for anybody,
What can be the same is in knowing that there is a balance of fairness to it all and the beauty that exists in life is available to us all and when we are ready to see it, you will begin to know it. Take comfort in knowing that you are or have been stretched so far in your feelings in your grief journey that the differences you experience now by comparison to others will serve you to have a life of beauty. Beauty sounds like a strange word to use when talking about grief, doesn’t it? I call it beauty because I do not know any other word for it. Fulfilling in life could be away to call it or see it. Then again it all depends on what lens the movie of life is being shown to us through doesn’t it?
I feel your pains in loss and grief and I wish to comfort you somehow. Those of us who know what you are experiencing feel for you and feel with you. You are by no means alone.
Oh yeah and to answer the question which is the title of this blog post today. What is different in grief? On the count of three, lets all say it together. EVERY f**king thing !!!!!!!!
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