Grief is a strange thing.
Sometimes it’s loud. Much like the blare of a train that pulls through town in the middle of the night and wakes you from a deep sleep. Sometimes it’s soft. Like a gentle rain that pops up out of nowhere in the middle of an otherwise sunny day.
Those of us who know grief well are obviously familiar with it. Yet it still manages to take our breath away when we least expect it. Doesn’t help that many of us feel trained not to talk about it. Not acknowledge it. Yes, we talk about the ones we’ve lost. We recall the funny or happy stories. But we don’t talk about the hard times.
When grief slams into you suddenly, out of nowhere. When it’s hard to breathe.When you struggle to stop the tears. When you spend hours sitting in your living room, listening to the same song over and over, just letting the tears fall and the pain course through your entire body.
Because it’s been years. We’re supposed to be over it.
No, those moments we save for private. We don’t talk about those struggles in public. We hide the tears. We hide it when things are too much. When someone says something that brings that grief back. We learn to stop talking about certain things because it makes people uncomfortable and isn’t for polite society.
We also develop a dark sense of humor. We have to hide that, too. Except for when we’re around those we deem safe. Those we know get it. Who won’t cringe or judge.
Those who get it know. Grief is always with you. It doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or last week or 20 years ago. Sure, you learn how to live with it. Manage it. You eventually get to a point when you don’t want to burst into tears every five minutes. Where the mere mention of their name doesn’t send you spiraling.
But it’s always there. Lurking at the back of your mind.
At first, you try to avoid it. Eventually, you learn to embrace it.
I recently came across a clip of the actor Andrew Garfield on The Late ShowwithStephenColbert where he gave a beautiful definition of grief. One I wish I had found when he first said it four years ago.
“I hope this grief stays with me,” he said, speaking of his mother who passed from cancer. “Because it’s all the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her.”
It’s a beautiful way of putting it. One that acknowledges the pain of losing someone you love and how it will always stay with you. How we can embrace it. It doesn’t necessarily need to be this thing that we hide away. Something we pretend that we’ve conquered. Because grief, well, it can’t be conquered. It’s always there.
It’s in all the stories we share of them. The way a song or a movie or a turn of phrase makes us think of them. Yes, we mourn that they are gone. We mourn the things they never got to do. The missed opportunities. The things we never got to say to them.
But we can keep loving them even though they are gone. And we keep them alivethroughourmemories and stories.
It’s okay to grieve, whether loudly or quietly.
It’s okay to let out all of that unexpressed love. From now until our own time comes.