After my young husband died, I joined several grief groups. I wanted to connect with people who knew what grief was, but more importantly, knew what I was feeling. The ups, the downs, the in-betweens. All of it. I wanted people around me who knew that grief sucks as bad on a Tuesday afternoon at a red light as much as it does on Christmas morning. I wanted to feel like I had a community who ‘got it,’ and who understood that some days we are ok and some days we are not.
But, the one question I hear from my fellow grievers, over and over and over again is, ‘When does grief end?’
I’ve thought about that a lot. I still think about it a lot. I wonder the same thing sometimes. And, the simple answer is, ‘never.’ It never ends. It never goes away.
Grief was an unwelcomed stranger that appeared on your doorstep one day and it has never left. He moved in, took a place in your life and started eating all your food. He sleeps in your bed. He follows you into the shower. He goes to work with you. He attends your kids’ events. He pets your dog. He infiltrates your life in the cruelest way. He takes over and confuses everything. He messes up your life and your hair. He changes your outlook, and we let it. Because we’re tired. We’re sad. We’re broken and we’re lost.
And so, we try to get rid of him. We try to kick him out. We pack him up and throw him out the door and as soon as we slam it and lock it, we turn around and he’s back sitting in the recliner throwing trash on the floor. We’re frustrated, so we talk to our friends and counselors about how to get rid of him. We rally the troops and we find things to help us ignore him. We stay busy thinking that if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. We even try to replace the person we’re missing. We think if we can fill the void, maybe we can feel better, but grief just hangs around and laughs.
We try to walk around it, under it, over it but we will be damned to walk through it. Because that kind of pain is immeasurable. It’s searing. Walking through it is like volunteering to cut off your hand with a dull knife. Nobody wants to do that.
But, you have to. You have to. Because only when you walk through it will you understand how to allow grief to live in your life without it controlling you. Only then will you understand how to let grief walk alongside you, and not fear it.
I remember the first time I really felt my grief. It wasn’t right after he died. It wasn’t at his funeral or even a week after that. For me, it came about six months later. I was in bed. The room was dark and cool, but I was having trouble falling asleep. My mind wouldn’t turn off. I tried everything and then looked over to his side of the bed. He wasn’t there. I knew he wouldn’t be there, but for the first time, it really hit me that he would never be there again. I reached my hand across the sheet, up to the pillow and traced it. My breathing was quiet. I was listening for him, I guess. My eyes were heavy and fixated on the blank space in front of me and before I could stop it, heavy tears fell. I instinctively shot out of bed, wiping my face and concentrated on deep breaths. ‘No,’ I thought to myself. ‘No, I will not do this.’
