Three Things No One Told Me About Grief

My father died 1 year and 7 and a half months ago. The first year was unbelievably hard but as I have written about extensively here, the rituals of grieving laid out by my religious tradition guided me through that year with a lot of gratitude and plenty of opportunity for the healthy processing of emotions.

This second year has not been easy but it is certainly less acutely potent and debilitating.

A few things have come up regarding grief in the second year which no one warned me about. I’m going to tell you about them in case it helps you should you ever experience loss.

1. All grief is linked. My therapist pointed this out after I exhibited – and continue to exhibit – some very potent responses to a variety of things which are indeed painful, but which I did not expect would be experienced as this painful. Examples include the death of my beloved hairless cat, Esau, romantic downs and downs (not to be confused with ups and downs), and offering support for others’ losses. Basically what this is like is the following: when I hurt in grief, I hurt more than had I not experienced grief. It’s like the worst superpower ever: I hurt extra. And it’s not so much that the pain is prolonged – I think I might actually prefer that to what it actually is, which is that the pain is more intense and feels like it lives inside of my guts and in every cell of my body rather than just me feeling sad and cognitively working through it. Losing Esau was horrendous. Romantic downs tap into the deepest recesses of loss that God has imbued me with the capacity to feel. Attending a funeral feels like my grief has been dragged out from the bottom of the fiery core of the earth and held over my head, threatening to crush me. So, that.
2. Similarities wreck me. No one ever suggested that being around people who have degenerative conditions would be brutal. So, if I meet people – men in particular – who have even a mild tremor (which could be benign, right? Benign Essential Tremor is a real thing!) or shuffle when they walk, it’s like I am back sitting next to a hospital bed and it’s week 2 of hospice and I am losing my mind. I didn’t know that would happen. When I’ve come across people who are suffering like this, I thank God that I am able to be so very kind to them – perhaps overly so. But once I leave their presence, I start to cry. But no one told me that would happen. So, that.
3. The times that were his and mine alone are the worst. I recently took a lovely little road trip from Minnesota to Iowa and I chose to take this trip to see some special people but I wanted to drive to them – and not have them meet me in Minnesota – because I love to drive. The only other person I’ve ever known who loves driving like I do was my Dad. He and I took a series of road trips when I was a teenager and we drove for an average of 800 miles a day. We loved singing while driving, and we loved the Midwest with its skylines and relative lack of buildings and lakes and streams and weather that changes with the seasons. We loved it all together. And now I have to love it alone. I had a terrific drive: 124 miles each way. I sang as I drove and I loved what I saw, but I had no one to share it with. And no one would care as much as my Dad would. We loved all the same things: quaint barns, weird trees, pretty rocks. Happy cows and oceans of corn fields. We loved rain out of nowhere and we loved a knee-buckling sunset. I’ve driven with a lot of people in my life, but no one like my Dad. And no one warned me that doing the thing he and I loved doing best would be so hard to keep doing when it was just me. So, that.

It comes. And then it goes. Like the life of a cat, and the cells of the brain, and your best friend; like so many delicate and precious lakes of Iowa passing by a car window at 65 miles per hour.

This too shall pass.