Grief

You first hear the news, then there is a pause. That pause lasts for an eternity. You see everything, past, present and your now shattered future. It doesn’t even sink in until you watch each thing you had imagined, break as if smashed with a hammer. You yell at whoever is breaking everything, just to stop, but it’s already too late. There is no way you can fix it, you know you can’t fight death, you know you can’t bring them back, you know that it is an end and you have no control over it. 

After the pause, your mind feels such a sudden shock that it crushes your chest, making it hard to breath, your mind seems to need to play catch up after the pause and it races to try find some way to fix it. Yes, fix, death. You feel a sudden thought process which anyone would call insane at that moment. “If I keep the hair in their hairbrush, I can clone them!”, “The doctor was wrong, bet they didn’t even check the identity or the pulse! What a stupid doctor to make such a mistake!”, “Nope, not dead, obviously witnessed a murder and are now in protective custody…” Some call this stage ‘denial’ but it’s not. It’s actually a coping mechanism, let’s face it those insane thoughts are helping aren’t they? Your breath suddenly is coming a bit easier than the torment from the first moments. We like the denial. Let’s pick up the shattered future plans and start assembling them back together? Wait a minute…Why aren’t they fitting together? Why are pieces missing? 

Then you accept that you are tired and you are sure that when you’re rested everything will make sense again. Like it did a few minutes ago, before you heard.

You lie down, but then the aching tiredness you were feeling refuses to let you sleep. You lie there feeling everything and nothing all at once and are sure that if you fall asleep, that you don’t want to return to the pain. If you manage to sleep, you have that beautiful moment of forgetting, which I’m sure is your brain trying to help you survive. The grief washes back over you like a tidal wave for the first few days. You feel it ebbing and you think you’re fine, then crash, then fine, then crash, then fine… You start emptying your mind to try stop it crashing again. You stare at a wall for hours feeling and thinking nothing. You need to protect yourself from that horrendous pain. You build walls and brace against them with all your strength.

The main problems are the numerous reminders of what you are missing. That hole needs to be filled. Quick find something, anything or the black abyss will grow larger!

This is where people generally turn to alcohol or drugs. They sweep through the misery and make an escape. If I can’t feel, then the pain can’t hurt me. Plus, it puts me to sleep, plus I don’t care if I don’t wake up, plus I don’t know how to exist in the world anymore, nothing is important anymore…

The sun rising is met with contempt. How dare the sun shine, how dare people smile, how dare everyday music, isn’t just requiems. You sneer at hope, you glare at happiness, you snarl at people trying to be kind. You start to envy people who have been killed on the news and in movies, making comments like, “Lucky bastard, no longer has to live in this hopelessness.”

People seem to think they need to get involved at this point. You can’t make them go away or leave you alone, so you pretend that you’re fine. You try to smile, almost having to remind yourself how to. You do everything they tell you to. You wake up, go to work, go to the shop, go home, sleep and repeat the performance. You feel yourself becoming a better performer each week. You don’t tell people that you cry yourself to sleep and drink a half bottle of vodka per night to fall asleep, because the show must go on. 

You get annoyed that people forget about you losing someone, because to them you seem like you’re fine. You even managed to forget a little bit as the crashing tide ebbs and instead of crashing into you and pushing you away, it now is trying to lure you and pull you out with it. 

Then comes the choice… Are you going to give up? Don’t worry, this isn’t a one time offer, it keeps coming back. Like the tide the choice is strong at some points of your life and weaker at others, but it will keep trying to pull you under. 

I’ve watched people fade beneath the waves and I promised myself each time, that it will not be me. But the choice comes daily and I wish I could lie and say you’ll get to acceptance, but that is a myth. You’ll feel less pain, you’ll laugh again, you’ll hope again, but the grief will always be there and it will hit you like a mallet, no matter how long you have thought you were okay. Then you’ll hear the tide calling you to come back and sink beneath the waves.

My only advice would be to remember to bring a kickboard if you’re not a strong swimmer…