My apologies for lack of new posts. I have been consumed in other parts of my life. I needed a break as the world processes dramatic political changes, a grieving process in itself. I have finally missed writing about grief and will try to write more soon.
Grief is a living thing
We lost our twenty year old son James to a firefighter training accident on June 6, 2005.
I write this as we approach, in June, the 20th anniversary of James’ death, and as we approach a day of balance on August 21, 2025 which is the day that James will have been physically dead for as long as he once lived and walked among us. Anniversaries are milestones along or road through grief, times when we confront or ponder about or grief, times we are often forced by the human construct of a calendar to feel our grief.
In the years since James died, I have openly shared my very personal thoughts on life, death and, of course, grief. Grief is universal to those in a good life full of love, because without love there is only existence, but no grief. With love, existence becomes life and there always be some grief in and around every good life.
Each year that passes brings a special few who find the strength to reach out and engage with me on a most personal level about their grief. We become, for a few weeks, or in a few cases for many years, casual pen-pals in grief. Most of these contacts are people struggling in early grief, universally they seek from me some magic nugget of wisdom that will catapult them to some comfortable end to their grief, a solution that they imagine must exist.
There is no such magic nugget of wisdom to fix grief. Through grief, each of us will become wise in different ways, because true wisdom only comes from resolving pain from loss or failure into understanding and acceptance, and removal of any anger left behind. Becoming wise from grief take time, it is a process of distilling the value of that love we have shared in life into lessons of how to better love the life we each have left to us after loss. This distillation happens in many stages over many years, and each year the spirit of love that we feel in our souls for our lost loved ones can become deeper, more pure and more fulfilling. How we move through grief is contingent on us wanting to move and allowing ourselves to grow around the loss.
Perhaps because I have lost a son, and my grief has now matured over 20 years, I have compared the timelines of grief to the life of a child.
Like a baby, early grief has no language that we can understand, early grief is all emotion. And using child raising terms, usually, early grief is very colicky and unsettled. Early grief will keep you up at nights and demand your constant attention, to the point of exhaustion and beyond. We seek ways to make ourselves comfortable with early grief, but in essence, we have no idea what we’re doing and why our lives are so disrupted. Like a new baby, early grief consumes all of our time, emotions and energy.
Like a child, a year later grief learns to crawl and then to walk. When we suddenly lose sight of grief, we panic. We now can’t imagine a life without grief, we become frantic and we don’t want our grief to disappear or hurt itself. As a result, wherever we go in daily life we have this invisible grief toddler strapped to us. If no one notices our grief child, we might become offended or angry that people are insensitive to our grief. But to the world around us, after a year of grief, our grief child is invisible. We’re now a year or two into grief, and we still don’t understand the words grief speaks and more importantly, we can’t yet speak our own language of grief.
At around the second year, grief enters the terrible twos. Our two year old grief child now often has terrible irrational tantrums. Two year grief swings its fists and hits us if we don’t pay enough attention. Two year grief stumbles and falls a lot, and cries out for attention. But two year old grief now actually speaks the words “I love you”, and cuddles into you as it falls asleep at night.
By three years, we may start dreaming of a future with our growing and maturing grief. Three year grief still brings tears, but three year grief makes us laugh and smile more than we ever imagined we might again laugh and smile. Because early grief is a desert of happiness, these laughs and smiles are new for us and confuse us.
By six years, our grief is now speaking to us in full sentences and bigger words, more complex questions and answers. We see hope that this grief may mature into a loving productive companion fo the rest of our lives.
By the early teen years, we’re talking to our grief about its future, about what it wants to be and where it wants to go in our lives. Many of us will talk with pride of the loved ones we have lost. Some of us will help guide and mentor others through early grief. Some of us will still struggle, some may never find comfort. Grief is unpredictable, some never find comfort, and some may never learn the language of their grief.
It is important to never judge or compare your path with grief by what you see in others who are grieving. I know that the vast majority of us will not speak of grief with those we don’t know well enough to trust. And so, I respect and value immensely those who share their grief with me quietly while seeking their own paths.
At twenty years, my grief for James is a valuable and comfortable part of my daily life. I begin each day with a few minutes thinking about what James would have been, because those thoughts have guided me to be more like who James would have been. James was kind and would have wanted me to try to help others find their way through grief.
To those new to grief, know that you will distill and purify your grief over many years ahead. Know that each year that passes, the grief will become more pure love and less anger, until one day a small sip of it each day will satisfy you and fortify you for whatever life brings you.
Be well, seek peace, learn the language of your grief, talk to your grief as much as you listen to it, and build love of life together with your grief.