On Grief

I wish it were simple.

I wish it were simple. I wish processing it were as simple and banal as a child getting candy.

I wish it had a schedule. I wish it came in, stayed for a while, and then checked out as a good guest would do. On-time.

In a world that loves putting emotions, people, and situations into buckets - It took me time to realize that you don’t need to “overcome” loss or grief. You don’t need to give it time to go away. You need time to understand and accept it. Because it is yours to keep now.

The loss is a pinch and the grief is a stab. Grief is what comes after and happens to you in waves. Some days it is kind enough to not overcast the entire shore. On other days, not so much.

But realizing that grief isn’t an enemy that you need to shoo away by distracting yourself in fitness regimes, and drowning yourself in work can be liberating and painful all at once.  

As we grow older, we inevitably face loss. Be it a person, your old identity, or a place you called home. In an attempt to subdue the pain, we look for comfort in platitudes that our loved ones indulge us in that range from statements like “This too shall pass” to going out more often to sweep the pain into a carpet that has seen enough.

It is because we have internalized to look at our lives as a profit and loss statement. And we are all bad, and borderline unethical accountants who want to pass off a loss as a profit.

But from what I can gather and reflect, my grief is mine to keep. It’ll stay here as a ghostly reminder of a future that could have been, but also of a beautiful and imperfect past that has unfortunately ended. It’ll be a temporarily painful, but permanently insightful reminder of a version that I was, and a version I wanted to be in the future, albeit with someone else or somewhere else.

An article in The New York Times on understanding grief had a line that stuck out for me:

“The way to survive grief is by allowing pain to exist, not in trying to cover it up or rush through it.”

Let your first encounter with loss, and grief manifest in ways others might not understand. Let it cry, club, or create. But let it stay. The acceptance should give you hope that the grief’s role in your life isn’t to paralyze you. It is to let you accept the multitudes that your life is going to contain. 

Full of loss, grief, happiness, and joy. 

But I wish it were simple.