Dear Jessica Brennan,
At this point in my life, I must need to learn about grief, because in the first six weeks of 2020 I got a crash course, as I lost five people I loved.
Initially, the first thing I learned was this. Grief is as individual as the people you are grieving, so you can’t pour it into a big grief-pot and deal with it all at once, or in the same way.
Once the memorial service is done, people tend to move on and leave you with your grief. You can’t expect the whole world to stop because someone you loved has died. But it does stop in many ways. Things get clearer. Moments leave you paralyzed.
In my case, the death of my father has created a deep, sludgy foundation in my heart and soul. It seems to be as vast and as deep as every minute I ever spent with him. I’m up to my neck in it. Then pooling on top of that, or sometimes quietly within that, are grief-globules representing the others who have died; isolated pain that bubbles to the surface at the most inopportune moments. Each of these bits of sadness is as unique as the loved ones they represent.
I also am learning that you can’t think your way out of grief. When you are “supposed” to be grieving, you might feel fine. When you’re “supposed” to get on with it, it might hit you from behind like a tsunami. It is sneaky. Trying to shift that sludgy mass by thinking, isn’t feasible. It has its own time, with no obvious relationship to how much you loved the person lost. Grief decides what grief will do.
Time does heal, and I am fortunate that with my dad; your mischievous grandpa, Dear Jess – I had no unfinished business. I think this might be helping with perspective as I am going through the process.
Yet grief still sends a wobble to the equilibrium. Anxiety rings like tinnitus. Time passes, but I don’t notice. Is it February, March? Is it April?
Stop crying. Keep going. One foot in front of the other. Go through the motions. The emotions.
Eventually, with each day that goes by, the murky sludge starts to grow a little grass, and even though the ground is spongy, I can take a step. I can take a breath. And I think I see a small flower pushing courageously up through the mushy terrain of my being. The light begins to return, first in tiny sprays, but it is there.
Grief starts to slip away and in its wake, it leaves a compost of vivid, warm memories to help enrich the after-life left here on earth.
My afterlife. Life after Lorna. Life after Paul. Life after John. Life after Frank. Life after grandpa. Life after dad.
Love,
Mum xo
😢💕