The purest medicine

If you live long enough, and if you love enough, you will know the burden of grief.

It is the most common experience we can have but the one we least want to talk about. Most of us have no idea how to grieve well. We are never taught. And we are surrounded by a culture that chides us to do it quickly.

Get back to work. Distract yourself. Focus on the positives. Close the door. Move on.

Grief is universal, but we each have our unique way of handling it, whether that is intuitively or by the heavy hand of our society. What you hear from me about grief is simply my own truth.

I had no interest in the quick solution. And thankfully, there wasn’t one person in my support group who even suggested it. I know this is not true for everyone who has experienced loss.

I also refused to choose numb.

After I started to break through the initial daze of losing Tim, I knew I could not shut off the tough emotions and expect to still feel the good ones. The physical pain was present at every fall-to-my-knees festival of tears. And yet, I found myself, at times with friends and family, actually laughing. I was still enjoying things I had always enjoyed. I was experiencing many other feelings besides the heart-breaking one’s related to loss. 

At first this was confusing to me, and I even grappled with guilt about it. How can I feel joy in the midst of grief?

And with that, I realized that grief was not pervasive. This didn’t mean I could, or even tried, to contain it. I didn’t want to compartmentalize it. But my life, as a whole, was not overrun by grief. Yes, it was there, but it didn’t ruin everything.

What a relief this was, because I knew that I could mourn this loss and not completely fall apart.

There are many life experiences that remind us about highs and lows. Maybe all we need to do to learn how to grieve well is to observe the natural order around us. There is light and dark. There is awakening and sleeping. There are seasonal changes.

Every single day, we observe nightfall. And in this darkness, we still allow ourselves to feel awe toward the stars and even relief for the opportunity to rest under their distant watch. We confidently believe that light will come again as dawn breaks. This cycle of day and night guiding all living forms to rest and revive again all in twenty-four hours.

We accept that certain trees and plants go dormant as the winter season engulfs them. We admire their hardy resolve to conserve energy and to only start growing again when the time is right.

If we honor these rhythms and cycles, perhaps, we are better prepared when we are personally stricken by a profound change. One that feels too heavy to bear. Perhaps every day, we are learning about death and how to grieve well, and we haven’t even noticed.

We will all face a time where we must sit at the feet of a difficult experience. Can you peacefully hold court there and know that it is where you must be? And can you, at the same time, see the light within the dark and stay open to the place where you can feel alive? Can you flow with the cycle even at its low arc? Can you learn to trust in the wisdom and the purpose of the pain?

I have come to see the process of grieving as a critical element to healing. It is the most natural and purest medicine. It’s the gold resin patching me back together (kintsugi), allowing me to proudly display my scars. Some days I feel like I now have a superpower. And at other times, I get scared about loving. There is a good chance that I will experience loss again. But when or if that loss comes, I know that grief is worth it. It is the proof that I have loved.