Describing Grief

There are millions of books on Grief out there.  I've read a few.  Some of them strike me as accurate, some of them don't.  What they do seem to have in common is a lot of cliches.  It's a roller coaster, it's steps, it's a yo yo, two steps forward, one step back, at your own pace, bla bla bla.  I find accurate or not, most of them are useless.  We've all grieved at some level over something.  Lost love, pets, parents, friends.  We know what its all about.  But to grieve for your child is a different animal altogether.  Its like a whale in a fishbowl, taking up all the room.  The books I have read give me concrete facts, but no real description to define grief.  No picture of what grief really is.  Nothing to explain to me if I am reacting 'normally'.

I just finished reading a book called "The Year of Pleasures" by Elizabeth Berg.  It is a novel, not a reference book.  And it is about a woman grieving her husband (about the closest grief I could imagine to child loss).  This woman writes so very vividly about everything.  Every aspect of the book is finely detailed with original and poignant metaphor, simile and personification.  You can see what she sees and hear what she hears and smell what she smells, but most importantly you can feel what she feels.  Although the focus of the book is not necessarily her grief, the eloquence with which she defined her grief feelings is stunning.  I found myself saying over and over--yes, exactly, that is how it feels. 

In this blog I just want to share a few excepts from the book that struck me as insightful.  Hopefully I'm not violating any copy write laws and should she see my blog somehow she would understand that I am sharing her words because I could never express myself as beautifully as she does. I know these are completely without context, so bear with me and maybe go buy the book.

Sometimes I felt on the edge of reality, unable to understand the simplest things...Other times, I went numb, as though vultures had landed inside and picked me clean.  At those times, I did not quite taste or see or hear or touch or feel.  And at those times, I thought cautiously, Is that it, then?  Am I through crying?  Am I healing already?  And then would come another tidal wave of pain, nearly nauseating in its force....

Another mosquito bite of grief.  I was beginning to learn that sometimes sorrow was a complex form of aggravation.

I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that work was exactly the right word to describe it.  It was [Michaela's] life that was over, not mine.  I had to remember that recognizing the distinction was not disloyalty.

I woke up the next morning full of a cheerfulness I was afraid to trust. ...and tried to ignore the guilt simmering inside.

I knew something about others predicting how long pain would last.  Pebbles flung against a mountainside, that's what that was.  Little bits of speculation thrown against an overwhelming fact.

I needed a break, a respectful visitation to a place I'd been ignoring.  It had been good--it had been a relief--to be so purposefully away from the reality....but in an odd way, I missed my sorrow.

...talking to a stranger would require something I now felt incapable of.

And noticed a specific and breathtaking absence.  At the moment, nothing hurt.  What I felt was only hope, that internal sunrise....I felt only my great luck at having had [her] for as long as I did.  I'd learned enough about grieving to know that other ways of feeling would come back soon enough.  But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived:  full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next.  Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.

I feel like I'm walking around carrying a really full--overly full--bowl of water.  When I don't look at it, nothing spills.

...her death changed our lives for the better, because it brought a kind of awareness, a specific sense of purpose and appreciation we hadn't had before.  Would I trade that in order to have her back?  In a fraction of a millisecond.  But I won't ever have her back.  So I have taken this, as her great gift to us....do I block her out?  Never.  Do I think of her?  Always.  In some part of my brain, I think of her every single moment of every single day.

Thank you Ms. Berg for letting me borrow your words.  I don't know where your insightfulness into the feelings of grief originate, if you have had a loss or if you are simply extremely empathetic.  But I have felt every one of these feelings and had every one of these thoughts in inexpressible waves of emotion.  You have beautifully expressed some of those feelings for me.  Thank you.