The bridge back from grief

Let me start by saying something I once would have found shocking, if someone had said it to me: grief is inherently selfish.

Does that sound insensitive? It should not. We cannot avoid ourselves all the time. And just as we need to eat and sleep, when we lose a loved one, we need to grieve. It is that simple. Grieving is the means by which we adjust to the cruel finality of our new reality - life without the person whom we loved. Our story continues; his or hers does not.

Few people can help you with grief, but everyone will try. Even the moment that grief begins is completely different not only with every person, but also with every circumstance. Does grief begin with numbness, despair, relief, or sadness? Yes. No. Maybe. It will be different every time.

But what never changes is the halting, but definite, attempt that everyone makes to help. When you lose someone, everyone you are close to rushes to comfort you. (and even a few you didn't consider close) They don't know what to say, and you will hear some real zingers. But they have all been through grief, too, and they are trying to relate their own experience to yours, in an effort to try and guide you through it.

The morning my wife's sister died, a friend told her husband to "be strong." I remember thinking that this one of the most inane things anyone could have said to him. How can you ask a man who has just lost his wife to be strong? But I learned later that, as much as anything, the man was talking as much to himself as he was to my brother in law. During the eulogy my brother in law gave (that he remained composed for), this very man cried like a baby.

There is nothing that anyone can say to you, no words that provide relief; however, what people say is not important. They are making an effort to reach you where you are. They are using their own experiences, their own awkward platitudes, to extend you a bridge. And it is a long bridge, one that takes months and years to cross. But the commitment people show you to support and hold that bridge for you is the solace they try (and fail) to reach you with using words.

That morning maybe a hundred people descended on the cottage - other local cottagers, old friends seldom seen in recent years. Awkwardly, they brought their words of sorrow, words of hope, words of (poor) advice, all things that none of us remember today. But we remember the hugs. We remember the chickens and pizzas brought over, the rides and trips to the store taken care of, the phone calls made. We remember above all the love they showed by deed, the only true way love is ever shown.

I misled you a little about grief when I began this (once again) overly long blog-vel. I said grief is selfish, and it is. But grief is also selfless. For grief is also love; it is our way of reaching beyond the circles of the world and saying to the one we lost, "I love you, I miss you, and I wish you were here." And it is our way of saying to those who are with us in grief, "I love you, thank God for you, and I need you to stay with me." It is, in the story from earlier this week, the hole in your perfect heart, the one you slowly fill with the inexact pieces offered to you from everyone who tries to extend you that bridge.