GRIEF – Thoughts and Poems

GRIEF COMES TO ALL OF US. It is one of the pains that makes us so human. It is also what makes love possible, for without love we wouldn’t have its ghostly twin, grief, or loss of love.

In my work with grief over the last eight years, I have found some thoughts I want to share.

• There is nothing easy about grief, but facing it, turning at least toward it at some point, will often be healing.

• If you are faced with tasks that you feel you “must” get done while in grief, tell yourself that you will spend some time later in the week feeling, just being with your grief. (And honour this by really making time later.)
• Related to the above point, some clients have put their grief in a box or a container that they constructed, either in their imaginations or in a real container, to be opened when they have completed something crucial that needed to be done.
• Any emotions you feel during grief are normal. Be they a feeling of void, or a non-feeling, sadness, anger, hurt, rage, disbelief, despair, fear, relief, love, or any other emotion that passes through you.
• All emotions are like waves on the sea. They build, reach a crescendo and then fall away. Remind yourself of this rising and falling when you feel a particularly acute grief-pain. It will pass.
• There is no “correct” way to grieve.
• Some people cry.
• Some people don’t.
• Some people wail.
• Some people go for long walks.
• Some build a shrine, place objects of remembrance near where they sleep or where they live.
• There is no correct way to grieve, however, if you notice changes that continue for a while while experiencing grief, such as heightened anxiety, panic attacks, survivor’s guilt, prolonged depression (lack of motivation, unable to get out of bed easily, sleeping for long periods, a general lack of interest in anything) or recurring traumatic memories then you most likely need to explore your grief in counselling. Or share it with someone you trust. Or join a grief group (email me and I can send on a list of grief groups in the Toronto area.)
• The well-known model of the Five Stages of Grief by Elizabeth Kubler Ross is useful as a guide. She identified 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These can happen in any order, and can be felt together at any time during grieving.
• Rituals can help us grieve. If you don’t have a religious tradition – or if you do and you want other ways to honour a person  – you can light a candle, mark a special part of a garden in memory of someone, create a special book of memories with photographs and quotes, write letters to the person, create a shrine or listen to their favourite music.
• Remember you are not alone.

Here are some poems on grief.

Maybe Very Happy, by Jack Gilbert (from Refusing Heaven)

After she died he was seized

by a great curiosity about what

it was like for her. Not that he

doubted how much she loved him.

But he knew there must have been

some things she had not liked.

So he went to her closest friend

and asked what she had complained of.

“It’s all right,” he had to keep

saying, “I really won’t mind.”

Until the friend finally gave in.

“She said sometimes you made a noise

drinking your tea if it was very hot.”

*

From Sentry Duty, by Tomas Transtromer

Task: to be where I am.

Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd

role: I am still the place

where creation does some work on itself.

*

Recovery, by Jan Zwicky

And when at last grief has dried you out, nearly

weightless, like a little bone, one day,

no reason in particular, the world decides to tug:

twinge under the breastbone, the sudden thought

you might stand up, walk to the door, and

keep on going… And in the seconds following,

like the silence following the boom under the river ice, it all

seems possible, the egg-smooth clarity of the new-awakened,

rising, to stand, and walk… But already

at the edges of the crack, sorrow

starts to ooze, the brown stain spreading

and you think: there is no end to it.

But in the breaking, something else is given – not

that glittering jumble, shrieking and churning in the blind

centre of the afternoon,

but something else – a scent,

like a door flung open, a sudden downpour

through which you can still see the sun, derelict

in the neighbour’s field, the wren’s bright eye in the thicket.

As though on the day in August, or even July,

when you were first thinking of autumn, you remembered also

the last day of spring, which had passed

without your noticing. Something that easy, let go

without a thought, untroubled by oblivion,

a bird, a smile.

Diane Arbus:

“Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping

forward on my belly like they do in war movies.”

*

Married, by Jack Gilbert

I came back from the funeral and crawled

around the apartment, crying hard,

searching for my wife’s hair.

For two months got them from the drain,

from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,

and off the clothes in the closet.

But after other Japanese women came,

there was no way to be sure which were

hers, and I stopped. A year later,

repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find

a single black hair tangled in the dirt.

*