The summer
after my youngest graduated from high school, I decided to take him and my
daughter’s five-year-old son on a trip across the country to my summer
institute classes in Florida, visiting family and friends en route. We headed out like the three musketeers on a
grand adventure. One of our stops was
Oklahoma City, OK. We had been driving
long days and I thought we might enjoy a break, so we headed to a western theme
park not far from the motel. One of the
first attractions that caught the boys’ eye was a haunted mine ride. I thought it would be like the Haunted
Mansion in Disneyland, so I agreed. When
we got inside the wooden building, I saw that it was nothing more than a huge
indoor roller coaster. When I was
younger, I loved exciting rides, but as an older adult, roller coasters
terrified me. There was no way to avoid
the inevitable, so I entered the car with the two boys. I don’t think the ride scared them, but my
screaming certainly did!
As I thought
of an apt metaphor for grief, I thought of a roller coaster. I entered an unknown place expecting one
thing and finding something entirely different.
In the beginning, I was numb and a little frightened as the gears
ground, pulling the car up that first enormous hill. Then I was plunged downward into terrifying
sorrow, feeling as if I’d left my stomach, heart, and soul at the top of the
hill. As the coaster tore around sharp
turns and plummeting hills, I was torn from the only life I knew and was angry
and disoriented. There would be moments
of relative calm as the car approached the next obstacle when I thought things were getting better, only to
have my hopes dashed by another plunge into grief.
This roller
coaster ride of emotion is one of the most challenging aspects of grief. You think you are getting better, only to
have your legs knocked out from under you.
There were times when I thought there would be no happiness anywhere and
all my tomorrows looked pretty bleak. But
I have learned that there is hope. There
is happiness. There is tomorrow. Here are some thoughts for your journey:
· Grief
isn’t a straight-line process. You don’t
go into it, get it done, and then move out of it, all better and happy
again. Expecting that “quick fix” left
me despairing and angry over and over again.
Understanding the spiral nature of the process has helped me be patient
in the process as I have suffered losses of other loved ones since Carmon’s death.
· Grief
takes longer than most people think. Unless
you’ve been there, it is tempting to think that you have a funeral, you cry, and
then you go right on with your life with hardly an emotional hiccup. Your grief won’t wilt when the funeral
flowers do. Be gentle with yourself and
accept the flow. If you know someone who
is grieving, be gentle with them. Don’t
pull away your support too soon.
· Unless
they’ve been there, too, other people don’t understand the time necessary for
healthy grieving. We really are a death
denying society. When the funeral is
over, other people go back to their lives.
They may miss the person, but the impact of his being gone is in direct
proportion to how involved and important he was in their lives. Losing a spouse is one of the most difficult because
the intimacy of that relationship impacts every aspect of our lives. You don’t turn that off in a few weeks’ time. If you can find one or two people who truly
understand, talk to them. I learned very
quickly that when most people asked me, “How are you?” they wanted to hear, “Just
fine, thank you.” If I tried to tell them
what I really was experiencing, they would back away as if I had the bubonic
plague.
· When
you grieve, you are literally redefining yourself in a new reality without your
loved one present. When Carmon died, I was
a stay-at-home mom. Overnight, I became
a single parent, the only bread-winner, a working professional, a part-time
student, the one who paid too many bills with too little money. I went to bed alone at night and waking up
in the morning alone was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Normal had to be normal without Carmon. I had to redefine life. I had to redefine me. That takes time. The Old Testament tells us that there is “a
time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes
3:4.) Don’t let others push you into
dancing when it is your time to mourn.
The Jewish
community understands and accepts grief in a much healthier fashion. They have a week of intense mourning, “sackcloth
and ashes” level grief, followed by a month of very focused mourning. They move through the stages for a year. Then, on the anniversary of the death, they
visit the grave again. It is a time of
ceremonial letting go.
It does
take about a year. Up until then, you
are facing sad “firsts” at every turn. The
first birthday – his, yours, and all of the children. The first Thanksgiving. The first Easter. The first Christmas. During that year, you have moments when you
say, “Last year at this time we were . . .” Experts say that a grieving person should not
make any major decisions for a year, things like selling a house, buying
something expensive, changing jobs, moving, getting remarried, and the
like. Give yourself that year.
If you are
experiencing deep grief, particularly crippling depression and ubiquitous
anger, beyond a year or so, it is probably a good idea for you to talk to
someone you trust. It is possible to
become “stuck” in grief. My sister’s
mother-in-law didn’t sleep in her own house for years – in fact, the rest of
her life - after her husband died. A
friend’s grandmother collapsed at the death of a son and had to be hospitalized
because she hadn’t grieved the death, under similar circumstances, of her
sweetheart forty years earlier during World War II. People say time heals all wounds, but it’s
not the time that heals: it’s what you do
during the time that heals. If you are
still feeling intense pain two or three years after the death and you have not
moved on to a new “normal,” then please, seek professional help.
As time
progresses, you will notice something about the roller coaster: the hills
become lower, the valleys, less deep. The
smooth stretches between the valleys become longer. One day you will recognize that you are
looking forward to something – really looking forward to it – without tension
and effort. You begin to invest less
emotional energy on the past and more on the future. The memories are less bitter, more
sweet. You will still miss your loved
one at times and for the rest of your life: weddings he can’t attend; grandchildren
he can’t enjoy; baptisms and missions and graduations. But these memories will be more poignant than
painful. When the time is right for you, reach
for tomorrow. It can be a beautiful
journey.
Picture of roller coaster from www.sodahead.com
Picture of flower path from the email "Roads." Sorry I don't know the original source to give credit for a beautiful photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment