What (my) Grief is Like

This is what grief is like.

A wave that pulls you under.

An undertow.

I’ve never been caught in an avalanche, but that sounds like something that grief could be like.

Sometimes you see it coming.

Sometimes, the sun is shining and your windows are down and your favorite song is playing and you are snatched up and pulled down, so completely under, you can’t breathe for the pain and shock of it. You didn’t even realize you were in the water and suddenly you are UNDER.

In it and under it and tossed around, tumbling against the turf.

And then….above. and you feel the sun and the breeze and take a deep breath and swim, tired and tender, towards shore but you are back on land, forgetting what it feels like to be scraped by the sand, tangled in the water weeds, your lungs aching for want of air.

This is what MY grief is like.

Our grief is not the same.

Even as we grieve the same person.

Because in some way, the way I knew them and loved them and was loved by them–that is uniquely mine.

And so my grief for them is uniquely mine. As is yours.

Mine is not more than yours. Yours is not more than mine. They are too different to be compared. We can share–parts of our grief, but not all of it. Part of it will always be something I (you, we) have to experience totally and completely alone. But we both, all, will be surprised by its unpredictable force.

Grief does not come or leave when called.

Grief is not one thing. Grief is loss and sadness and anger and love and laughter and joy and unknowing. Where are they? How are they now? They are “not here”–that is the only definitive, the only known.

Grief is losing and being lost. I have lost someone I gave love to, and I have lost the love they gave to me. It is gone. I feel loved less. I am emptier, I am less loved, but I’m carrying more - the love and worry of the departed? People need to be loved and worried over, so I pick it up - an intangible heirloom. Someone must and so I will. When I said goodbye the last time, I didn’t mean goodbye. I meant I’ll see you soon–we’ll talk again. I didn’t know. But I said I love you. I saw your smile. Your joy at seeing me. It’s not enough but it has to be. I wish I’d been able to say goodbye knowing.

They lived a full life. They lived a hard life. They should have had a better life. But we’ll always ache for the time we didn’t have. There is never enough. It’s not possible to have enough. There is no satisfying our want of loving and being loved by.