Day 193: 25 Truths About Grief

Continuing on with the 30-day online writing course about grief using 20 minute unedited writing in response to a daily prompt. Go to http://www.refugeingrief.com/30daywriting/ to read more about the course. Today's prompt:

If you could tell people something, tell them what is true, what is true about grief and love and loss, something they do not know, or can't know, what would it be? If you could address them, what would be said?
You might start with: "what you don't know... " or: "what does not show..." 

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What is true about grief.

1. When you get "the call," your knees will buckle and you will fall to the earth just like in those old dramatic black and white movies. You will fall to the earth and beg for it to open up and swallow you whole. You will be unable to stand. You may panic and start to frantically turn your head, looking around, searching for something but unable to put a name on what you are searching for.

2. You will feel lost.

3. You may try to climb into the hospital bed with your loved one. You may speak to them. Kiss their face. You may cry over them and momentarily be struck by the fact that it looks like they are crying, too. You may see your own tears drop on the still face of your loved one and it will look like they are crying. You may feel like you are both weeping for what cannot be reversed.

4. You will dive deep into the "what if"s and "but maybe if I had"s and you will bargain and plead for time to stop moving forward away from the day your love was alive and here and warm and being held by you. You will momentarily believe you hold the power to have made a different result and you will admonish yourself for being so careless as to not use this power when it was needed. You will feel at fault.

5. You may have a hard time leaving the house. Once you do, you may have a hard time getting out of the car when you reach your destination. You may sit hours in a car, cocooned in it, unable to lift your hand to the ignition to retrieve the key. The door handle will be too heavy to squeeze. You may sit there, motionless, with no radio on. You may even eventually, after an hour or more, send a text message to a friend and tell them that you are stuck in your car.

6. In the first few days, food may repulse you. A single almond may sit in your mouth atop your tongue, and you will consider biting into it. Chewing it. Swallowing its mass down your tightened throat. You will be unable to do so. You may lose a ridiculous amount of weight in under 10 days. You will feel disgusted when months later someone says to you, "I wish I could lose weight like that."

7. You may devise ways to feel like your love is still with you, just to ease the worst of the trauma. You may sleep with your love's pillow, a tshirt of your love's over it like a pillowcase holding in their scent. You may place your head on this pillow and try to mimic the feeling of your love breathing by closing your eyes and raising and lowering your head just slightly in the rhythm of your love's sleepy breaths. You may fashion an article of clothing in a roll in the middle of the bed so when you reach for your love's hand in the middle of the night something is there for you to grab hold of. You may do the same with the passenger seat of the car.

8. You may be momentarily furious with your love for careless and unhealthy decisions that led to their death. You may drive in your car and scream at the top of your lungs at your love asking why. Your rage may hop around, visiting other hosts- those who were oblivious to your love's pain, those who helped your love drink it away, those who made bad decisions right along with your love. You will sometimes feel angry.

9. You will have days of being able to function, looking "normal," laughing at jokes, and being productive at work. You will have these days and also you will sometimes unexpectedly be plunged right back into early grief. You will not be able to predict when this will happen.

10. You may fantasize about dying. You may see every car passing by as the one that can take you out. Every building as the height from which you can fall. Every suspended heavy object as the weight that can crush you. Every plane you're in as the one that can go down. Each bus as the one that may crash. You may have constant ongoing fantasies of dying and this can be normal. There is a difference between depression, suicidal thoughts, and the exit fantasies that deep grief can produce. Your friends and family may not understand this and they may be very alarmed to hear you speak of it. A good grief counselor will get it.

11. There is no wrong way to grieve. However you're doing it is exactly right. Keep on doing it.

12. You may want to go visit the place where it happened, if it was an accident. You may never want to step foot near it in your life. Both are ok. If you want to go see it, it doesn't mean you're morbid. You are attempting to understand what happened. You are connecting with your love. You will continue to visit there until you don't need to anymore.

13. People will want you to be better. People will want to be assured that you will return to the old you. You will never return to the "old you." You are now a different person with a hell of a lot of qualities of the previous version of yourself and a lot of new ones.

14. Some friends that you would have imagined would be right there next to you through all of this mess may back away.  Other people you haven't seen in years or people you've just met will swoop in and fill that role of unexpected supporter. You will have strange and serendipitous connections with people as you choke your way through grief.

15. You may not be able to go to sleep. I don't mean falling asleep. I mean you may spend hours and hours on the internet, unable to unplug. Afraid you'll miss something. You may feel like the walk from your couch to your bed is too long. Too daunting. You may not want to get in that fucking empty bed one. more. time. You may just not be able to do it.

16. You may get a dog. You may expect it to die within the first few days and you may feel yourself fighting attachment. You may eventually become so attached to that dog that you can't imagine not having it. You may be grateful for your little dog.

17. You may feel sick to your stomach when hearing about things related to your love. If you lost a lover, you may feel physically nauseous when a friend tells you about how in love they are with someone they just met. If you lost a baby, you may feel sickened to hear about someone's surprise and happy pregnancy. Some joys just can't be co-experienced when you're cloaked in grief.

18. It's possible that you'll forget what has happened for a micro-second each morning when you wake up. You make actually think you made the entire thing up and you will admonish yourself for being so dramatic. You may also create elaborate fantasies that end in the whole thing being a cruel practical joke.

19. In the first few hours or days after your loss, you may go into a kind of manic telling and retelling of happy times. You love did this. Your love said this. One time this happened with your love. Oh, did I tell you about the time that this other thing happened? Those who don't understand grieving may accuse you of being manic. They may send you messages of being concerned. A quick search on the internet will tell you that this, too, is absolutely normal.

20. You may cry so hard that you burst blood vessels in your eye(s). You will use so many tissues, it will be ridiculous. You will wonder how your body can produce so much liquid. It's also possible that you may not cry at all.

21. You will find help.

22. You will slowly start to identify what softens the grief. What refuels you between going under. What allows you to continue. You will find these things and do them.

23. The grief will soften. People will promise you this, but you won't believe them. "It won't go away," they'll tell you, "but it will soften." They will use this word: "soften." And one day, perhaps after six months, you will start to believe them. You will believe that yes, ok, you can keep going on. You can do this. You just won't be happy about it.

24. You will in a matter of months find small moments when you are laughing. When you feel relief. When you are eating and enjoying a good meal. Singing along to a song you like in the car. Belly laughing, even. You will see that you can hold this recurring joy at the very same time that you hold your grief. You will be able to hold them both and one will not cancel out the other.

25. You will want to do everything you can to make sure the last of your love does not vanish from this earth. You will speak their name and ask to have it spoken. You will shy away from those who are not comfortable in the presence of your grief. You will continue to tell stories. You will voice "my love would have liked this" and "this makes me think of my love" and "today, especially today, I really miss my love." You will do things in their name. You may continue things they would have done. New pictures may go up in frames. Here, you will say, this is my love. They existed. They were here.