What I think about grief and what the general public thinks are likely different in so many ways. First of all, it depends on the grief we’re discussing. If your pet dies, yes it’s very sad, and you will mourn the loss for a time and may or may not get another pet. When Colton died, I actually had someone say to me, “I know it’s hard, I had to put my dog down last week because he had Cancer too”. Um, sorry, NOT the same thing and you do NOT know how hard it is.
If a friend dies, it can fill your heart with sorrow and flood you with memories of the connection you had to your friend…and you will continue to dwell on that loss for a long time, but eventually, the pain eases and you remember all of the wonderful memories of the good times you shared with them and you are able to move on and accept the loss as a beautiful chapter in your life. When you think of them, the dominant feeling is the love that you had for them.
When it became evident that my parents were nearing the end of their life journey, it was definitely a sorrowful experience. Your mind and thoughts are filled with the all the time spent with them, good and bad, over the years and you are filled with grief and uncertainty of what your life will be like without them in it. But it is the natural order of things to eventually lose your parents. As adults, we gradually watch their physical and mental decline and along the way become accustomed to the fact that they will eventually leave us. We have time to prepare our hearts for this burden. If we are very fortunate, we have siblings to share this burden. In the best case scenario, we can be there when they pass and witness the end of their life’s journey. This was the case with my father. Colton and I were able to be there with two of my three siblings for his passing and it was with both sorrow and awe that we watched him go.
However, there is a grief unlike any other, when it is unnatural and out of the order of things. When there is no way to prepare your heart and mind for it. When the sheer power and force of it is beyond measure. The loss of your child. The Stages of Grief mean absolutely nothing to you. Your body is in a state of utter shock. You are unable to catch your breath because there is a crushing weight on your chest. Your eyes are swollen shut and the blood vessels surrounding them have exploded and you look like you’ve been punched in the face because you have cried and will continue to cry oceans of tears. Your joints and muscles ache like you’ve been slammed into a concrete wall. You are beyond tired but cannot sleep because every time you close your eyes you see your dead child and know that from this moment on your future is just a vast chasm of time that you will spend without him. Inside of you there is a scream like no other, and it just lives there. For as much as you scream, as much as you cry, yell, swear, sob, pound your pillow or the floors or the walls, for as much as you throw things or maybe just sit in silence unable to move, the strength of that scream is simply unable to get out. It’s now the state in which you exist. Over time it may retreat into the back stage left of your mind, seemingly dormant, only to rush to the front and center of the stage needing to be seen at the most inopportune times. You may be able to harness this for a time, but eventually the sheer weight of it begs you to let go….
There are thousands upon thousands of grieving parents out there and I know they are feeling this. There are over 11,000 on one Facebook group alone, and there are so many groups just like it. They are closed groups for a reason: no one wants to hear what is really going on inside of us, because they know there’s nothing they can do.
They see us carrying on. Working, looking after others, taking care of the house, the cooking and the chores, all of it. So, we must’ve moved on. So, we must be ‘over it’. So, we must be ok, right?
We’ll never ever be who we were before. We have no choice but to do what we do to survive. “Ok” is a relative term.