The Ebb and Flow of Grief

 

Photo by Pok Rie

I was thinking about how grief ebbs and flows through a person’s life. I remember the first time I experienced the death of a loved one. It was in 1995 when my grandfather died suddenly. Despite his old age, he was healthy, so his passing came as a shock. 

I was living in Phoenix at the time, as was my younger brother. My parents were still in Wisconsin. I received the call while I was at work at First National Bank. Of course, the loan documentation I was working on came to a standstill as I tried to process the news, and then deliver it to my mom. I vividly remember where I was standing when she explicitly said she would not be traveling to Arizona to help with any of the arrangements. At 26, I was left to handle things alone—not only the details around his death, but also in passing the news along to my grandmother. It was a lot for a young person to handle, and I insisted my brother at least go with me to view our grandpa's body. 

My first brush with loss was a traumatic one, interwoven with a dysfunction that is better left for another post. It was hard to truly experience my grief when I was immersed in planning and juggling things that were so foreign to me. 

There have been other losses since: my other three grandparents, my beloved childhood dog, three cancer diagnoses, two miscarriages, and (of course) the death of my beautiful boy. It seems as though loss and grief weave a continuous, intertwining thread throughout my life, as I’m sure it does through all of our lives. 

Losing is hard. Unbelievably so in some cases. At the same time loss weathers me like a piece of driftwood, it also can serve as a touchstone, helping put other problems and disappointments into perspective. Sometimes it serves as a flotation device or even an anchor, keeping me afloat or tethering me from drifting off into the minutiae of life. Suddenly, the guy on the road who cut me off isn’t such a big deal (I handled cremation arrangements on my own). Or the real estate clients who ghosted me don’t matter all that much (after all, I endured two miscarriages). Or the rejection letter in my inbox that feels like a personal attack on my creativity isn’t the end of the world (because there’s nothing worse than losing a child). 

I’m not saying these other things don’t matter, but grief offers perspective. All while still hurting. At times it’s a gentle current beneath the surface. Then, unexpectedly, it either rises like a tidal wave to wash you out or sneaks beneath the surface and carries you away like a riptide. Living a human life, it's an undercurrent for all of us. And, in the end, it's the great equalizer and place from which we can find connection with other human beings.