“The truth has legs. It always stands.” (Rayya Elias)
Rayya passed away at the beginning of this year. I love this line of hers. I don’t know if anyone else has felt this, but it feels like there have been a lot of deaths lately. Lots of friends and family members I know have experienced loss of some kind, and it just has me thinking a lot about grief… It’s such a weird thing, isn’t it? It’s the worst. On the one hand it is the absolute WORST. Grief is horrifying and tragic and I hate it and I wish it didn’t exist.
But on the other hand… I kind of need it. Maybe “need it” isn’t the right way to say it. I desire it? That doesn’t sound right either. I’m not exactly sure how to put this into words. Grief… I benefit from it — I guess. It’s like this:
The death of a loved one to me, on its own, is the worst thing ever. Period. It is in one word:
hell.
At least for a time.
Here is the difference maker:
To me, death without grief is hell without hope.
But death with grief… it’s hell with hope… it’s a temporary hell (if you will).
Death + Grief —> Hope….
Hope that someday things will be better.
That someday it won’t be so hard to do the simple things that feel so impossible to do in the midst of loss: like get out of bed, or go to work without crying, or respond to “Hi, how are you?” with “I’m fine, thanks” without feeling like the biggest bullshitter on the planet.
It leads to hope that someday we’ll meet again… somehow… the person I’ve lost and me…
Hope that all that I’ve been through with the person who is gone wasn’t for nothing. Hope that it all had a purpose.
Hope that all the loose ends that weren’t tied up,
all the things that I meant to say when they were alive and didn’t,
all the things I wish we did together,
and all the regrets…
they’re all okay… they’ll all somehow, someday, in some way be resolved.
It leads to hope that the person who died is not really dead,
but alive in a new way that I haven’t totally figured out yet.
Hope that there is a good God out there, and that He’s somehow going to use this whole fucked up mess for something freakishly beautiful.
Grief to me is the bridge…
from dead to alive,
from hopeless to hopeful,
from “How will I EVER EVER be okay” to “Even though it is so not right now, someday, everything is going to be alright.”
What is grief anyway?
Grief; n. “keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.” (Dictionary.com)
Grief actually comes from the Latin word gravare, which means to “make heavy.”
This is the important part for me. The making heavy part. It’s taken me a long time to learn this, but to me to grieve someone’s death is to “make heavy” their death.
To experience the intense GRAVITY of their no longer being here.
To not try and do normal life like I did before they passed,
To not try and brush it all off and put a smile on my face when my insides are scorched for the sake of making other people comfortable,
To not make light of anything that’s just happened.
But to let the reality of the person’s death be as heavy as it is, which is always just way too heavy to bear. … And what happens when something that is too heavy gets placed on someone or something that cannot bear its weight?
It breaks. Naturally. It quite literally cracks under the overwhelming pressure.
And that is the key:
The breaking. The cracking.
When we allow ourselves to grieve, we can’t help but break under the weight of it all… because it’s just too horrific, when we look death in the face not to, isn’t it?
It’s too unfair. It’s too brutal. It’s too ugly. It’s too gut wrenching. It’s just too damn much.
And it’s in this breaking that lives the hope that I’m talking about. Ironically. It’s in the shitty shitty brokenness that it seems we can begin to heal (and I mean REALLY heal and begin to be okay in our hearts, and not just pretend to be okay with our words).
The problem: We don’t like grief very much.
At least I don’t. Or I should say I didn’t…
For the first 20 years of my life I tried to convince myself that I was somehow above grief… that I could somehow bypass it. Like maybe if I just forced my cheek muscles into the shape of a smile hard enough and kept moving fast enough, I wouldn’t even feel sad about the fact that my grandmother died a slow, brutal, entirely unfair and horrific death when I was growing up (just one example).
The problem is we’re afraid to break. For me, I was afraid because I couldn’t possibly imagine a world where I let myself break and in that same world, would also have the capacity to someday be put back together again. I thought I couldn’t handle the breaking, and so I made it my mission to run from it.
The problem with the problem: We can kind of get away with not liking grief in this way.
We can actually delude ourselves into believing that we are above grief, and can outrun it if we want. The problem isn’t that it’s impossible to do that, the problem is more that when do that… how should I say this… it fucking blows. 😃 You can “move on” with your actions sans grief, but there’s this part of you that still feels unresolved inside because of it… unfinished, icky, bad somehow. That’s what my experience with avoiding grief has been like anyway. (Maybe it’s more pleasant for other people).
Grief as Friend
Anyway, I’ve been trying to welcome grief in as a friend in this season. To “make heavy” the loss that is around me, mostly, selfishly, in order to avoid the feelings of unresolved and unsettled-ness that come with dubbing grief my enemy…
And surprise surprise, throughout this process I am finding myself very much broken under the heaviness of it all.
And it’s awful.
But also wonderful.
It’s weird.
In the heartbreak I’m finding a strange type of liberation that I haven’t experienced any of the times I’ve disowned my grief. I am indeed seeing glimmers of hope.
I guess I’m learning that it’s only when we acknowledge the reality of what is that we’re able to welcome in the hope of what will be.
ALSO, as Glennon Doyle says, our hearts were actually made to break. There’s no need to run from heartbreak, because we were created to be strong enough to handle it.
Grief looks like…
I firmly believe that grief can and should look different for everyone. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to grieve. But here is what it has looked like for me recently (and at different times of loss throughout the past few years). Maybe you can relate.
Grief to me looks like
getting emotional in inconvenient places (and not apologizing for it).
Grief to me looks like
taking my emotions (or lack thereof) in stride. It looks like not beating myself up (and asking myself why I’m such a cold-hearted B) when I can’t seem to cry when everyone else is.
Similarly, grief to me looks like
being patient with myself when I feel overwhelmingly sad about the loss long after I think I should be “over it”… Grief looks like recognizing that in the same way that I can’t rush grief along, I can’t slow it down either.
Grief to me looks like
locking eyes with death, and saying a giant F you to its face. (I can grieve, but it doesn’t mean I have to pretend I don’t despise death).
Grief to me looks like
going through old pictures, singing and listening to old songs, and going to familiar places that all remind me of the person who’s gone.
Grief to me looks like
appreciating my deep desire to take the pain away from those I love who are also hurting from this loss. At the same time, grief looks like me gently reminding myself that even though I’d do anything to if I could, it is not actually my job to take away the pain for them (nor is it possible for me to).
Grief to me looks like
being patient with myself, recognizing that in spite of knowing on a logical level that I can’t make the pain go away for those that I love, I will stubbornly still always try to (classic 🤦🏻♀️)… and then when it doesn’t work, I’ll inevitably try to blame myself for it, telling myself I’m not doing enough or saying enough to make the people I love feel better. Grief looks like constantly reminding myself that I’ve already done more than enough (showing up is my only job), and I can rest in that. I can stop trying to hold together what so desperately needs to break right now (my own friends, family, and self included).
Grief to me looks like
patience (always more patience), anger, confusion, tears, laughter, reminiscing, heartache, grace, pain, joy, and suffering… oftentimes all in one day, and sometimes all at the same time.
Grief to me looks like
viewing every aspect of my grief, no matter how ugly or painful, as an act of celebration of the person who’s passed away, and a palpable representation of my refusal to let them go without proper recognition.
Grief to me looks like
breaking, and then sitting in my brokenness. It looks like hitting Rock Bottom and letting myself stay there for a bit, feeling hopeless… knowing that my feelings don’t equal the truth (or at least the permanent truth) all the time.
{A tangent on Rock Bottom}
a metaphor for grief
A funny things happens when you’ve sat at Rock Bottom for long enough. Any of you who are familiar with Rock Bottom will know what I’m talking about… What I’ve found happens is, after some time (sometimes a LOT of time)… Rock Bottom actually begins to rise… without you even realizing it, because you’ve been so absorbed doing all these things (i.e. looking at all of the brokenness inside and outside of you, mourning with friends and family, missing the person you lost, being present with the heaviness of it all). It’s like suddenly you look up for a minute from all that is in front of you, and you notice a ray of light coming from up above you that wasn’t there before and that wasn’t previously within reach, but now kind of is. It’s small and it’s still pretty dim, but it’s definitely there. Agh. Am I making any sense? Has anyone else experienced this?
What I’m trying to say is:
Grief = Sitting at Rock Bottom →which leads to→ Light
Grief to me looks like
trusting that that light will continue to get closer to me and brighter naturally, with time, so long as I keep staying in the present, feeling the heaviness, and letting myself break when I need to. (I will continue to rise in the midst of the brokenness, I don’t need to try to make myself rise. The place where we surrender is the place that God steps in for us).
Wrap it up Bibs, wrap it up.
Okay last thing, which is really the only thing I wanted to say all along before I started sharing way more than just “a word” on grief…
One thing I’m always so starkly reminded of when someone passes away is the fact that virtually NOTHING matters in life…
except Love.
Nothing. Drama, questions, (first world) problems, wants…. None of it matters. Period.
“The truth has legs. It always stands.”
In times of grief, the ONLY thing left standing at the end of the day is Love. The truth is Love. That’s it.
May we never require an event as tragic as a death to remember this in our daily lives.
And to my grieving friends out there: may you know how loved you are, and how okay it is to let your heart break in such a heavy time as this.
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Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash