It’s a funny thing Grief. Not so much when your caught in its grasp, struggling for every breath. But retrospectively, I find grief to be darkly humorous. Any one who has lived has felt grief. Grief over the lose of a loved one, a cherished pet, a missed opportunity. The kind of grief that causes physical pain, heart wrenching sobs coupled with ragged gasps for air. The kind that drops you into a black pit of despair and causes you to contemplate taking up permanent residence in this solitary pit of pain rather than clawing your way back to reality.
Grief becomes like a shield from logic, from life and from existence. If during grief, one was capable of processing thoughts coherently they would be able to realize that even through the intense pain they are feeling, there is nothing to be gained from wallowing so deeply entrenched in sorrow. It doesn’t sound funny, but to me the fact that you waste time, waste life mourning for someone or something that would never want to see you in pain is humorous (Perhaps I should mention I approach many painful situations with a laugh rather than a tear).
There are so many factors that come into play when one finds themselves held in griefs clutches. The type of loss, the expectedness of said loss, the emotional and physical well being of the sufferer, responsibilities, etc. I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to be caught in this trap a number of times. I’ve lost friends, family and most recently my most treasured pup, Darwin. Each time I find myself once again clinging to sanity as waves of bleak despair crash over my head taking me to places of sunless skies and roiling seas. I frequently find myself in the shower when I finally feel the grief, perhaps because I am alone and the shower will hide evidence of my emotional break.
That is where I found myself shortly after my precious Darwin left me. As the cold water poured over me, the pain escaped in violent sobs, I couldn’t move and didn’t have the interest in doing so. I wanted to collapse in a heap on the tile and wait for the pain to cease, for someone to force me from the hands of grief, for my eyes to open and find my snuggle buddy asleep next to me after a most horrific nightmare. Alas for me none of this was to be. I cried long and hard releasing the pain until only fresh water slid down my face, my tears washed away into oblivion. Climbing from the shower, I went through the motions of life, finding clothes, not mine they would remind me of my dog, getting dressed, even brushing my hair. When I completed these tasks on auto pilot I had nothing left to do but climb in bed and try to reign in my thoughts, avoiding the pain as best I could.
I laid there thinking. I wanted to cry, to break, to quit my job and spend the summer lying in bed mourning my loss. But as grief pulled and tugged my subconscious, slivers of logical thought broke through the shadows. What was the point of the pain? Was my broken heart helping anything or anyone, or was it a selfish action? I thought about how much time I could waste in pain, thinking terrible sad thoughts, and realized that the only point of grief was to get stuck. How much time had I wasted just being sad? No one who dies, no one who lives wants their loved ones to sit around in pain not living themselves. I think they would instead want that person to live on experiencing the world, because life is too short. No matter how long you are given, its never enough. There is always going to be more to do, to try, to experience and those wasted hours spent think of what was, of what could have been, of what should have been, those thoughts are just excuses to not live, to not move forward, to be stuck in the twilight zone of grief.
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