“For in grief nothing ‘stays put’.  One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.  Round and round.  Everything repeats.  Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?  …how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty…The same leg is cut off time after time.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Even when we lose people suddenly, we lose them in stages.

There are some traditions that mourn their dead twice – once when the person goes and once again when their ghost leaves.  Because losing the physical person is a shock, but that is often followed by the comfort of a new reality that includes a surprisingly real presence of that person lingering around us.

But then sometimes that ghost moves on too.  One day you reach out and can’t quite find them anymore.  And just as you had settled into the comfort of a new reality, you lose them again.

The Buddhists refer to “necessary suffering” and “unnecessary suffering”.  Grief is necessary suffering.  You don’t get to make sense of it, decide how long it takes or when it shows up.  You don’t get to choose what is silly or worthy of grief.  It just finds you and eats you until it is done.

Distractions

Nature provides many very real-feeling distractions the give us the option of not feeling grief.  Arguably, the most gratifying distraction is anger.  Blame, revenge…so delicious.  So much easier than hurting.  Anger is active.  It gives us something to DO.  We can feel righteous, not just sitting in our pain, but doing something about it.

Alternate pain works too.  The Dani people of New Guinea had a tradition of cutting off a finger at the distal joint in mourning.  A friend who worked and studied there recalled for me a time he saw 5 men chasing a mourning widow around the camp to keep her from throwing herself into the outhouse pit.  She was desperate for the relief of being consumed by some filth stronger than her grief.

Regret is a good distraction.  If only I had…if only I hadn’t…It is my fault…I must punish/fix/figure out myself.  Hating ourselves gives us some sense of control.  I can’t bring this person back, but I can fix me and never feel like this again. You can’t.

The courage to sit in the filth of grief

It’s counter to what feels brave – just sitting in our mess and pain.  It’s not advisable for most kinds of pain.  If you are afflicted by many kinds of things, the pain is there to show you that it’s time to move, time to run, time to break something and make something new happen.  Pain is the fire alarm that gets you out of the house before it burns to the ground.

But when you break your leg, you need to put it up and wait it out.  And when you lose someone or something that was taking up a big part of you, the only way to the other side of that pain is to have the courage to sit with yourself in the darkness and let the wind blow through the hole that is left until the sun comes out and it starts to fill it up again.  To resist the anger, regret, and pain trade-offs that just prolong the process and rob us of the beauty of loss.  To just tell the truth – to ourselves, to the world.

And the truth is this:

• You loved something with enough sincerity and courage that losing it punched a hole in you. You showed up.
• You had something so beautiful that you can’t ignore its disappearance.
• You will never go back to being who you were before.
• You don’t get to decide when it stops. Sometimes it comes back when you aren’t looking.
• It might not make any logical sense.  It’s no use being embarrassed.  Just because you don’t think it should rip you up doesn’t mean it won’t.  It just does as it pleases.
• You can’t fix it. You just have to do it.
• Everyone has to do it. Being honest about it helps other people understand their own experiences.  We need each other.
• There is nothing to be afraid of. Even when the lights are out, the room is still filled with love.

Thoughts?  Start a conversation in the comments below…