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Key points
- Grief can blindside us at otherwise ordinary moments.
- Grief is an invisible wound because all our pain is internal.
- Sharing these experiences can help educate others about grief.
Checking in at the doctor: “Is [late spouse] still your emergency contact?”
Seeing that product you always bought for him at the supermarket.
Other people’s joyous anniversary/vacation/"I love my spouse" social media posts.
Suddenly noticing that your milk expires on her thanoversary (death date).
A meaningful song on the car radio.
A piece of junk mail addressed to him.
These otherwise banal moments can blindside us.
An Invisible Wound
Grief is like walking around with an invisible illness, like suffering the kind of disability that causes people to shoot you dirty looks when you park in a handicap space. We function, we look normal, we go about our day-to-day and get things done. But every now and then something unexpected happens and activates all that pain again. Grief waves can happen anywhere, at any time. Sometimes they're in response to nothing, but many times you can trace them to something so small it hits on a near-subconscious level.
What can you do when that happens but feel it? Let it roll through you. I calmly provide a new emergency contact—a good friend—while my heart wails. I have been known to let out a sob or two in Costco; I would prefer not to, but I am not always in charge. I cry freely and often in the car because the city in which we lived our entire marriage is a minefield of reminders. And the radio... I never know when "Tumbling Dice" will come on and rip my heart out. Of course, another time it might come on and warm my heart. You just never know. This is a helluva ride.
Universal but Misunderstood
We live in a society that doesn’t understand grief. It’s often treated as something untouchable (shhhh, don’t mention her husband or it will make her sad) or as an illness that one eventually recovers from. It is neither. We who grieve like nothing more than talking about our loved ones, and you can’t make us feel any worse than we do. And we will never fully recover from the loss. The most acute pain eases, although it can still strike us even years out, usually kamikaze hits that are over fairly quickly. The ache, however, is forever.
I don’t believe it is possible to fully understand grief until you have experienced it yourself—and even then, different losses are different experiences. I grieved and still grieve my brother, Oliver, who was 25 years old when he died in 1987, but losing my husband, Tom, after 35 years together is entirely different. Tom was deeply woven into every aspect of my life; there is almost nothing I do and nowhere I go that doesn’t have significance of some kind. As David Kessler puts it, I feel like half of a pair of scissors.
It is possible, however, for those of us who grieve to help educate the world. I think of it as a service for the people whose families tell them they need to “get over it” and friends who wonder “when will you be like you used to?” (The answer to that is never. We will never be just like we used to be. We will be happy again, we will experience joy, but we will never be exactly who we were. We are changed forever.)
Teach the World
I generally prefer not to whimper in public, but I am not shy about acknowledging those moments when grief strikes. I posted on social media when I had one of those doctor’s office moments the other day—it’s among the experiences that come up often in grief groups—to shine a light on how grief’s tendrils reach into every part of our lives.
I suppose posting about these things is partly a bid for a little TLC as well. I'm sheepish about this, but grief must be witnessed, Kessler says. Still, I also do it because people need to know. America is grieving—we are surrounded by grief, whether we are aware of it or not. More than a million Americans have died of COVID-19; more than 15,000 people have died from gun violence this year alone. Opioids—and in particular, fentanyl—have cut a vicious swath through society, leaving in their wake untold numbers of bewildered and devastated parents; I see them all too often in my support groups. And that’s on top of the more “ordinary” deaths from disease and (though the term seems to have fallen out of favor) old age. And every one person who dies leaves behind dozens of people who grieve the loss.
So let people see your loss when it feels safe and comfortable. It needn't be dramatic (unless you feel dramatic; I don't judge). Just say you're having a moment. Let them know about the drip-drip-drip and occassional flood that is grief. Educate your world.
None of us is safe from grief; it strikes everyone eventually. So while all the prior knowledge in the world can’t fully prepare anyone for its gut punch, it can be reassuring to know that almost everything we experience in grief—including the lightning bolt of heartbreak when that special song ambushes you—is “normal.” Grief itself is normal. Terrible, but normal. And it changes everything.
