Reflections on the complexities of grief
Last year, I made a conscious decision to temporarily leave behind life as I knew it and move to the opposite side of the world to care for my elderly mother. I have not done this lightly. I have left behind my adult children, my close friends and a life that I enjoy.
There is grief in this, although it can be difficult to name. Because I have chosen this road, there’s a dissonance between the gratitude and relief I feel in being able to support my mum, and the weight of grieving the life I’m temporarily living apart from. Once again, the complexities of grief are revealed. And I realise that I’m living in a moment of it.
Having experienced both the unexpected loss of people I love, as well as having lived through the devastating deterioration that dementia brought to my lovely dad, I am aware that loss does not always begin at the moment of death. Sometimes we begin losing people, relationships, independence and familiar ways of life long before we say goodbye.
Often this is referred to as ‘complicated’ or ‘disenfranchised’ grief because it does not slot neatly into society’s idea of mourning the death of a loved one. Sadly, so often, it feels as if grief is expected to behave in a certain way, falling into predictable stages on a nice, even linear path that allows us to feel a sense of progress and achievement during a painful portion of life’s journey that will eventually have an ending. But this is a dangerous illusion.
And I believe it’s this illusion that can add to our suffering. While we expect to only grieve when someone dies, and that it will only last a certain time until the stages are finished, sets us up for even more heartache. We unconsciously put pressure on ourselves to grieve a certain way. I have had clients come to me requesting help to ‘get grieving right’ as if there is a blueprint for us to follow that ensures they will feel exactly as they used to ‘when this is all over’.
I think it’s more helpful to recognise that our ability to grieve is as normal as our capacity for love and joy. And that in fact they all sit alongside each other without negating one another.
Wendell Berry reflects this in his beautiful poem, written after the death of his companion dog. He describes how much he misses the walks they shared through woodland or climbing hills, the way that his four-legged friend ‘thrashed in undergrowth’. Yet at the same time, Berry noticed that when he rested in the quiet of his sorrow, he found a different joy in his walks that allowed a different experience. He discovered that he could grieve and find pleasure simultaneously.
Similarly, I am here with my beautiful, frail mum, laughing and grieving at any given moment. I grieve for the relationship I no longer have with her, yet my heart bubbles when she thanks me for a gesture I’ve given, and my soul sings when I hear her laugh at foolishness we’ve shared. I grieve for the life I’m not temporarily living in my hometown, yet I have more joy than I can express sharing daily life via WhatsApp with my gorgeous kids and friends.
I realise that by choosing something loving, there’s the danger of my feeling that I have somehow forfeited the right to grieve its cost. Yet this is not true because love and grief coexist.
Richard Rohr possibly sums it up best by stating: Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things ‘work’, but about reconciling contradictions.
I’m beginning to recognise that an unexpected gift in all this is the ability to fully experience the non-duality of life in the way that grief and joy show up as twin companions held together in love.
And I also have a greater awareness of what is still possible while someone I love is still here.
I cannot prevent future loss, and I cannot guarantee that I will have no regrets. But I can pay attention now. I can ask what matters, and where there is something still within my power to do, I can choose to do it. Right now, I’m learning to live in ways that I hope will leave less unsaid, undone or unloved.
And this gets me thinking that maybe it is part of learning to age gratefully…allowing grief to teach me how to love more intentionally while I still can.
Neuroscience shows that grieving rewires the brain as we learn to live with the loss we’ve been dealt. We experience an identity shift. And it is the self-compassion we bring to this metamorphosis that will help enable us to adapt.
One study highlighted how being able to name how we feel reduces the negative impact. Grief is a multifaceted emotion that can be overwhelming in its complexities. Giving myself permission to dive into the cauldron of varying emotions I’m experiencing at the moment has been nourishing.
It reminds me that I am not my emotions, but that these emotions are in me.
And that they are, in fact, all normal.
1. Berry, Wendell. "1980, II." In A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998.2. Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. London: SPCK Publishing, 2013.pg 543. Lieberman MD, Eisenberger NI, Crockett MJ, Tom SM, Pfeifer JH, Way BM. Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychol Sci. 2007 May;18(5):421-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x. PMID: 17576282.