Grief Graffiti

This is my prayer, my hope, my mantra. I just want, through it all, in spite of it all, to be kind.

I recently read a conversation in an online support group where a woman shared, “Before my grief I used to pride myself on being easy going and flexible. Now I am so rigid and stress out over the smallest things. I am angry most of the time.” She went on to say: “I feel like my grief has turned me so bitter. After physically and emotionally losing my person & the toll her illness has taken I have to admit that I’m just a piece of the person I used to be. I loved myself before for always being cheerful & happy. Now I barely communicate without wanting to shut off or I am just angry all the time. I literally feel like I’m so nasty as a person and I hate it because I have no emotional strength or bandwidth left. I am trying so hard to make my heart better, my therapist & hobbies help some days but In general I am just…changed. I literally hate who I have become. I’ve pushed many people away. Some are upset with me but I just think screw them. Dealing with the rest of the world is very hard and I worry that people will just assume I’m an asshole But I’m not. I’m just so traumatized I can barely interact with people.“

I felt that. I don’t want to be angry and bitter and most of the time I’m not. But other times I can’t seem to control it. I’m angry & I find myself easily annoyed by thing people do or say. My younger son have had many a fight since we lost his brother, usually over some inconsequential thing that we never would have fought over before. I find myself snapping back at people so quickly I don’t even have a chance to think how it will make them feel. Then there’s the guilt for not being able to bite my tongue. I think we have this image, maybe from books & movies or social media, that grief is this beautifully sad & gentle thing and we admire grievers for their poise & strength in handling it. But the reality is grief is messy. Litsa Williams says it so well in her article in What’s Your Grief:

“Society has created this narrative that idealizes the idea of grieving with grace. You have probably seen it in the movies, in books, and subtly being reinforced when people compliment you on how strong you are and how you are handling things with such poise. Poise… blech, I had a slight gag reflex just typing that. As annoying as this narrative is, I do understand why it emerged and persists. It is more comfortable to imagine grief as tidy and poised than ugly and messy and sometimes mean.

“It isn’t easy to be open about all the messy stuff if you feel a pressure to only display that strong, graceful grief ideal. You may feel like your grief should be a single tear running down your strong, poised face as you gaze off into the horizon. In reality, your grief feels more like a botchy, swollen, snotty, red-face over a pint of Ben and Jerry’s next to a growing mountain of dirty laundry.

“So, just a little post to remind everyone: Grief isn’t always strong, courageous, graceful, or poised. Grief feelings are often messy, complicated, ugly and sometimes make you feel like you’re a bad person, or like you’re going crazy.  Don’t worry, you’re not a bad person. You’re probably just a normal person dealing with the sometimes bad thoughts grief creates.”

She goes on to list eight of the feelings that come with grief. It’s a great list & I recommend reading it entirely. But she sums it up with this:

“The bottom line is: You think of yourself as a good person, a nice person, a reasonable person. Then suddenly grief makes you feel crazy, erratic, selfish, judgmental, and all sorts of other things that just aren’t you. You don’t want to talk about it because you feel like people would be horrified if they knew just how not strong and not poised and not graceful your grief really is. But the reality is, that’s grief. Facing the ugly thoughts, talking about them, and acknowledging that none of them make you a bad person is important.”

~Litsa Williams, “Eight Times Grief Made Me Feel Ugly, Mean, or Crazy”

And then there’s the kind response from a fellow griever to what the woman shared in the online support group: “What you were then has not been lost, it is still you. The soul forgets nothing. That you are currently angry, bitter and sometimes perhaps even unbearable is understandable and allowed – because your fate, your loss are unbearable – how can you not be changed and angry? You are allowed to feel all the anger in the world about what has happened. Life does something to us, it changes us in ways we sometimes don’t want, because we are just human beings with feelings and a great vulnerability. The anger you feel and your bitterness is all pain. It’s not your fault what happened, and right now you need all the strength you can get to overcome it and deal with it. Then it will get better and you will become more peaceful and loving again. You carry the love for your person inside you, and it will not be lost. As I said, the soul forgets nothing. It will come back. Until then, don’t beat yourself up too much about how you have to be, you already have enough on your shoulders.“