Though a friend of mine lost her husband to cancer thirteen years ago, she still describes grief as a frequent companion. She says over the years she softened to its presence, though it often comes without warning and never by invitation. After a pause, she added her belief in the healing power of grief. Her perspective resonates with me, and though I feel grief and I are familiar friends, grief’s arrival still brings trepidation, not comfort. No matter how many times you grapple with grief, even coming to terms with its reality—it still feels unfinished. An insatiable chasm of darkness, grief comes seeking more of you when you have nothing left to give.
Yet, you feel drawn to it. A macabre dance, you embrace grief while simultaneously stiffening your body against it.
As I struggle to understand my relationship with grief, these same thoughts surface each time I find myself in its company. But is grief all that bad?
I confess my own mixed feelings about it; with an almost schizophrenic approach, my thoughts move from one extreme to another when describing it. At times, a pain filled encounter forcing me to relive the loss anew, a prisoner with no volition of my own, grief leaves me no escape.
While at other times, a softer side of grief beckons a companion’s presence in silent witness to loss still endeavoring to speak. Both instances require a revisiting of a loss but from different perspectives.
In the first instance, a forced revisiting of a loss in its entirety as it unfolded, sifting every detail despite the exquisite pain, because there is something I missed—something I must see. Almost every time I submit to this process, I find a missing piece. The pieces provide closure where I struggled with restlessness over the loss.
A good example of this is when I revisited my last moments with my sister-in-law, mere hours before her death. I received a deep comfort I failed noticing at the time.
Unresponsive from sedation and disease progression, she looked serene in her stillness. I spoke words of love and sweet memories to her, read scripture passages on heaven, and told her how I wished we were chatting over coffee again, while holding her hand for the last time.
Until I revisited the painful memory in full detail upon grief’s insistence, I missed one tiny aspect which altered my perspective. In the replay I saw it.
As I spoke about having coffee together, her face, which until that moment remained placid, became animated. It was easy to overlook the first time because the change was slight. But the second time it was unmistakable: the way she always raised her eyebrows in excitement the moment before she smiled. There it was, for just a moment—but I saw it now.
It may seem a small thing, but when you sit at the side of an unresponsive loved one in their last moments, everything in you longs to know they heard your words.
I now knew she heard me and tried her best to respond. If grief had not forced me into reliving those final moments, I would still be holding the heaviness of speaking words which remained unheard, living with the feeling that death robbed me of my final goodbye.
In the second instance of grief’s gentle invitation to sit with it in silent witness, brings quiet reflection of a loss which also provides missing pieces. But these pieces teach me something new; how to love within the loss.
As an example, sitting with grief in reflection over my mother’s death freed me from the bondage of regret, enabling me to love my mother in ways I never accomplished during her life.
A complicated relationship, my mother and I remained estranged at the time of her death. Unable to reconcile childhood trauma and neglect, I labored with any true engagement with my mother and pulled back when I felt uncomfortable with her interactions. All of which resulted in an “on again, off again” broken relationship.
Each time grief visited me over my mother’s death, we sat still while memories washed over me. Whenever regrets surfaced, a specific memory unnoticed before came back at the same time. The first memory was of my cousin, who spent extended time with my mother in the years prior to her death, as she moved through the reception line at the funeral. She embraced me, extending condolences, but then paused, and with great feeling she told me my mother loved me very much.
Another similar memory came upon the heels of the first: my sister-in-law commenting on how my mother saved all the cards I sent her over the years, and even my baby book.
This may seem normal, but my mother had moved in the last years of her life to a tiny apartment with zero storage requiring her to cull many of her belongings. That she chose to retain those extraneous items spoke volumes.
Yet another memory surfaced, this time of my mother’s own childhood. A childhood filled with trauma, loss, and hardship.
Through these moments of reflection with grief, I saw my own pain, but I saw my mother’s pain too. Each reflection worked the transformation of wounded places into places of healing. I saw both my mother and me with new eyes.
Grief removed the regrets, replacing them with understanding, which in turn set me free to love my mother’s memory.
I now beheld the amazing woman she was, and how she lives through me in the strengths and unique character traits she gave me.
Where once I resisted grief’s knock on my heart’s door, I now welcome its invitation to healing and wholeness. Though the journey leads through pain, loves meets me along the way, and grief’s work transforms that pain.
Though many people view grief as a process to be completed, it is the healing work of a lifetime. Never leaving altogether, grief weaves itself into the fabric of your being. Intimate with the depth of your sorrow, it continues a transformational work of healing through that same sorrow.
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