The Grief Journey

I can't tell you how much I hate the title of this post.  I wish I could think of something better and I probably could but I stuck with "The Grief Journey" because it gave me a good opening line.  It's a good catalyst for getting my mind in gear to write about all of the things that piss me off about grief and since I don't plan out any of my blog posts I usually need something like that to get the thought flow started so I can shunt it to the keyboard.  But I digress..

Going through this grieving process I naturally look for support in various places and the Internet is all at once one of the greatest places and one of the worst places to find support and some wisdom.  Anybody looking for some help on the Net is going to have to wade through a bunch of broken heart images with poems overlaid and an endless stream of "organizations" that will tell you how to continue your relationship with your lost loved one and I'm sure they will also be happy to hook you up with a personal medium who will connect you with your loved one on a regular basis for a monthly fee.  Yes, there are plenty of people out there who will do anything to profit from your grief and they have designed their approach to seem like they are giving you some assistance by taking away the pain and you never have to say goodbye.  A little bit of advice (take it with a gain of salt, I'm no expert) to those who are going through this.  Grief is a natural and necessary physical, emotional and spiritual reaction to losing someone.  If you want to get past it you have to go straight through it and forget about hiding.  I'm not saying that you have to be a complete blubbering mess for months on end but you do have to confront your pain and embrace it.  There are plenty of people who can give you support and lend a shoulder to cry on when necessary but if someone tells you they can take your pain away just turn and run.  They are robbing you of the pain that will help you become the person you need to be to face your new reality without your loved one.  Well... that's my opinion I guess and I know damn well that KB would be extremely upset with me if I sought out the help of a psychic :-D.

You have to deal with a lot of poetic phrases and soft music and gentle pats on the shoulder and people treating you like glass.  I'm already broken and in pieces here, you're not going to break me any more than I'm already broken so let's just say it like it is.  Grief sucks! Ok, I tamed that down a bit so as not to offend tender folk but just know that in my head I'm probably using at least five of the seven words you can't say on television and maybe even some compound words that I've cobbled together from those five.  I'm as guilty as the rest of the grief dwellers out there because there are plenty of times when I hear some sad sappy tune that reduces me to tears or I stumble across a Keats poem that hits home and I post it on facebook.  Yes I actually did that.  I don't regret it but I do these things because they mean something to me.  They move me in some way and my grief is allowing me to find a new appreciation for things that I didn't fully appreciate before. So sometimes grief doesn't suck so much if you're willing to see the upside to it.  To be honest, the only way I can wrap my head around seeing the upside is to tell myself that the positive things that come from my grief are a gift from KB.

Part of my own grief journey (I also don't like the term "grief journey", blech) includes a lot of reflection and meditation.  Yeah, I can see a lot of guys out there rolling their eyes and thinking, "Oh suck it up princess".  To those I simply say, "Come talk to me after you've held your wife's hand while she takes her last breath and tell me that you just suck it up and carry on."  The truth is that strong people don't run away from the scary and uncomfortable things and if your reflex is to stuff it down and just be ok with things, you really need to get help because you are not nearly as strong as you think you are and grief will eat you alive if you don't face it.  Anyway... reflection and meditation... this next bit might get a bit bumpy but bear with me.

Really, "reflection and meditation" just means that I take some time to think about things.  Just sitting there and letting my thoughts roll around in my head until they make some sense or just go away.  I'm sure people think I'm falling asleep with my eyes open or that I've gone into a shock coma or something like that... maybe sometimes that is also the case but most of the time I just think.  And as terrible as all the pain and sobbing is, it opens me up to new things and I'm starting to see that the person I used to be is not here anymore.  KB and I died the same day.  A good part of who I was came from her.  She changed my life and changed who I was just by loving me and showing me what love really is.  Just ask my kids how much I changed after KB and I got together.  That part of me survived and that's the part of her that survived as well.  At the same time, much of who I was has died and grief is the process of rebuilding all the broken and dead pieces of who I was and either discarding them or putting them back together to become someone new.  In some ways that's exciting and I think that facing your pain head on allows to make some choices about the person who will emerge on the other side of grief.  This is my chance to become more like the person I want to be if I have the courage to do so.  Is that a gift from KB?  Maybe.  Maybe it's a gift to myself or maybe it's the final gift that we give to each other when we love someone completely and truly.  There is no doubt that it is a gift and why would you ever refuse it?