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Key points
- America is a nation in grief, yet we are grief-illiterate.
- The loss of a loved one is unimaginable until it happens to you.
- Everyone's loss is unique, yet some elements of grief are universal.
- We can't escape the pain, but we can learn to minimize the suffering.
Trigger warning: Considering that grief triggers can happen any time and any place, it’s a pretty safe bet that a blog about grief will contain triggers. If you’re grieving and feeling particularly fragile, perhaps save this for another day.
One day, in the spring of 2020, my husband went to work and never came home.
I found him that evening at his picture framing shop, felled by a heart attack.
My life, in an instant, was completely upended. His heart had stopped, mine was broken. It was two months before what would have been our 30th wedding anniversary, three months before his 60th birthday.
“I can’t imagine. . .” people say.
No, they can’t. Nor would they want to.
This is not my first encounter with loss. I lost a brother to an overdose in the ’80s, two of my closest friends to AIDS in the ’90s, and my parents in the 2000s. The pain of those losses were of varying degrees for me, but none comes close to the anguish of losing Tom, with whom I spent more than half my life. He was woven into the essence of my being, part of everything I did, and thought, and felt. He was invested in my happiness and I in his. He was my person.
And then, suddenly, he was gone. And I am learning to live with grief. I have no choice.
Why this blog?
Now that I am nearly two years into the experience and feel able to begin speaking coherently about it, I have decided to launch this blog on grief, though I do so with trepidation. It’s such a big topic and will require rummaging around in my own pain, which is kind of scary. Nevertheless, the time feels right.
We are a nation in grief. At this writing, 900,000 Americans and nearly 5.8 million people worldwide—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, husbands, wives, friends—have died in the pandemic, leaving behind an unimaginable number of grieving people.
We are also a grief-illiterate nation. People don't understand grief, they (unsurprisingly) don't want to think about it. There are no guidelines to help us navigate grief as there were, for example, in Victorian times, which had rules and traditions for mourning. (To define our terms, grief is what we feel, mourning is what we do.) Back then, for example, you wore black in mourning, a visual cue to your fragility. Widows wore full mourning dress for one year, then half-mourning dress for one year, when they could add white, grey, or lavender to the wardrobe once again.
Because of the pandemic, many of us have even been deprived of the most important public ritual that we did still have: the funeral. We trudged through our early grief, when it was at its most raw, without even hugs. Even as the non-huggy introvert I am, that was rough.
Today, we in grief are left to negotiate the hardest thing we will ever experience with little formal support from society. A flurry of concern surrounds us early in the loss but dissipates well before our tears dry. We band together in support groups because when we try to discuss grief with outsiders, we often get platitudes or deer-in-the-headlights looks. People mean well but the whole business terrifies them. While I have been exceedingly fortunate not to have heard this, it’s not uncommon for people to tell grievers to, “get over it and move on,” which could not possibly be less helpful.
As humble as I feel about tackling a topic this large, and despite the fact that I will never express anything as elegantly as Joan Didion did in her magnificent grief memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, I have also decided that there cannot be too many people talking about grief. We who are grieving need to talk about it, need to know we’re not alone. We who are human need to understand it.
Seeking the meaning
And, I hope this blog will help me as well.
David Kessler, the grief expert, who, through his writing and his website, Tender Hearts, has been wisely and gently shepherding me through this singular misery says, "Grief must be witnessed.” For whatever reason, (and more on this later) it is important for people in grief to have their pain seen and acknowledged. Perhaps this blog is an outsized expression of my need to be witnessed.
David, a mentee of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, of five-stages-of-grief fame, has added (with the blessings of Kübler-Ross’s family) a sixth stage of grief: finding meaning, which is also the title of his latest book. A bereaved father himself, in his work counseling people in grief he has come to understand that processing such a cataclysmic event as the loss of a loved one requires more than just acceptance. We also want to find meaning in it, to bring some value to this overwhelming pain.
Writing is how I make sense of the world; it is one way I hope to find meaning.
My grief is not your grief, but they're related
Grief is both universal and intensely personal. The loss of a spouse or partner is not the same as the loss of a child, which is not the same as the loss of a parent, which is not the same as the loss of a sibling. The loss of my spouse is not the same as the loss of your spouse.
In some ways, my experience of losing a spouse is very different from the experience of someone who lost a child or a grandparent. Yet, there are many universals in grief—enough of them that we who are grieving can learn from each other even when our losses are different.
From David and others, including other people in grief, I have learned ways to manage some of the challenges of, well, getting up in the morning. I have learned strategies for wrestling with the most painful thoughts. I don't suggest you can make grief neat or orderly. You can't. Grief is messy, chaotic, and exhausting. But as debilitating as grief is, there are some things we can learn to manage. We cannot manage the pain or sorrow, we have to just let those have their way with us. But, we can fight the despair.
If you are grieving, I am so sorry. I get it. Really. I hope this blog will speak to you. If you have never grieved a loved one, I am glad you are here because somebody in grief needs you to understand. And, of course, you too will experience grief someday. Everybody does. We have no choice.
