At some point I’m going to do a series of book reviews of the grief books I’ve been reading and post them somewhere where the grief group has access. Some of them have been very helpful, some have been comforting. A couple have been lame, or worse, and will go with me the next time I go to open mic, where I’ll trade them for better books.
However, even among the chaff there have been a few tidbits worth remembering. One of them gave me the clarity as to why so much of what people say to the bereaved sounds hollow at best, and really, really awful in general. The reason is because the comments made address the intellect, or perhaps the spirituality of the one who proffers it (if not the griever’s), whereas grief is a purely emotional response. The three are certainly not interchangeable.
One of the exercises suggested you write down all the things you’ve been told over a lifetime about grief and how to deal with it, explicitly or implicitly, and so I did. Here’s my list.
1. Grieve alone.
2. Just give it time. Time heals.
3. You have to get a hold of yourself.
4. Get up. You can’t wallow.
5. Life goes on.
6. He’d want us to go on and be happy.
7. Just because it wasn’t in your plan doesn’t mean it wasn’t in THE plan, God’s plan.
8. Be glad he didn’t suffer. He went quickly.
9. You can’t die of a broken heart.
10. He was happy at the end; that should comfort you.
11. Remember the good times.
12. You had 2 good years; some people never get that. Be grateful.
13. He must be going out of his mind up there, to see you like this.
14. If you couldn’t handle this, it wouldn’t have happened.
15. Everything happens for a reason.
16. This has happened to you to learn something from it.
17. You’re clinically depressed.
18. Are you feeling better? Are you feeling better yet? Really? Not yet? I’m sorry you’re not feeling better yet.
19. We want this to be a happy day, not sad. We might not leave the pictures out all night.
20. You’ll always have wonderful memories.
21. All we can do is go on.
22. Follow these steps, to the letter, and you’ll be 100% in your grief; if you don’t, you won’t.
23. Nothing lasts forever.
I have had some choice rebuttals to all of these, in my head at least. The problem with offering an intellectual response to an emotional problem is that it does nothing to help you feel better, and it implies that you are a moron. People who grieve are hurting, not brain damaged. Do I really need to be told that life goes on? Do people really think that I would rather he had suffered horribly, that I need to be told to be grateful he went fast? And is it realistic that anyone expects that I be glad for any aspect of his death? “Be glad he went fast”? Are you kidding me? While I would never wish him a moment’s suffering, ever, I will never, ever be glad he went at all. To be told that I’ll have the memories is to tell me something I know only too well; one of the major facets of grief, of my grief anyway, has been that I know that’s ALL I’ll have. Remembering the good times is easy enough; realizing that there will be no more is what breaks your heart over and over again. It is because the intellect so clearly understands what has happened that the grief overwhelms you, and yet rarely does anyone offer anything that speaks to the broken heart. There have been a few, and for those I have been grateful.
Especially difficult is being on the receiving end of other people’s spirituality that implies I’m ridiculous for feeling so horrible that my beloved died, because he’s in a better place, this is all part of some infinite master plan whether I see it or not, and that to feel this way means I’m mentally ill. I’m not clinically depressed; someone I love DIED. Grief is the normal and natural reaction to that. My favorite bit was the subtle, supernatural, coercive implication that I was hurting A with my pain. If they truly believe he’s in the hereafter and feeling no earthly pain, the argument is specious; and it’s a really horrible thing to say, period. And as for "there’s a reason for everything that happens," unless you can tell me precisely what it is, may I suggest that telling me that there’s a good reason my sweetie was taken from me by death, even if you really believe it’s true, even if it really IS true, is probably not politic or kind to mention it right now.
As difficult as it has been to deal with this mismatch of comfort and need with others, however well-meaning, what has been more difficult is the realization in the last few days that I am as guilty of it towards myself as any other. I have been frantically trying to think my way through this, at best possible speed, and yet for all my efforts I find myself slowing down to a crawl. I’ve been slipping back into darkness and despair, and have been, for the last two weeks or so, been a mess inside, to put it bluntly. It seems the harder I try to get better, the worse I feel. It’s the trying, I think, that’s the problem. I keep thinking that I should be working toward “better.” And yet, while I feel like I’m supposed to be acting, I admit I have no idea what I’m doing. I have never felt quite so rudderless in my life, and yet there I am on the deck, trying to set a course when I can’t even read the compass. A recipe for shipwreck if I ever heard one. I can feel the rocks scraping my hull.
I have been trying to figure out something that cannot be figured. It can only be felt. My brain has rarely failed me before and so I try to use it as always. But it just makes my heart hurt more, placing demands on it that have no expectation of being met because when logic and emotion meet, they can only exchange pleasantries. They do not speak the same language. And so while my mind keeps saying “you should be doing this, trying that, making an active effort here,” my heart just digs in and says “G’head, you do your crazy hamster wheel thing, but I’m not going anywhere just yet, and you can’t make me. And the harder you push, the shittier you’re going to feel.”
I was having a nice e-mail conversation with a friend the other day, expressing the feeling I’d been having that I needed to step back from all this trying I’d been doing, and he said to me “Just live…there’s nothing proactive to be done here.” I needed to hear that. I really did, because I had been feeling worse, not better. Forcing myself ahead just put me further behind. I griped back to him that he was right, but that it was entirely ironic, because that’s all I wanted A to do. Just live. The thought stuck with me, though, and the more I thought about it, the lighter I felt, like the pressure was off. Just live. I realized I’d locked myself into this unarticulated expectation that I had to “get through this” fast so that I could start my life again, when in fact, this IS part of my life. There’s no cut-off here, no “Whew, well, glad that’s done; now I can get back to normal.” This is part of me now, and that’s just the way it is. My job is not to outrun myself; it isn’t to think my way past my feelings, because that is impossible. I can lie to myself easily enough, for a time, but that’s not really my thing; and I know now that I cannot think my way around this, because I’ve tried and failed. I cannot segment my life; I have to absorb it and carry it with me as I go about doing what it is I do. There’s no point in trying to rush. And rush where? And how? I haven’t the foggiest. When you’re lost, you don’t keep driving 100 miles an hour (well, not if you’re a woman, anyway). You stop, and get your bearings. And so I’m stopping. There are no medals, no gold stars, no deadline. I don’t have to have all the answers. All I have to do is just live. Just live.