Grief Graffiti

Why? Little word, big question.

Anyone who’s been around a toddler knows how complicated life gets when we start to ask why. In the context of grief, the question of “why” can be one of the most infuriating thoughts that we come back to again and again.

The first challenge of “why” is that we have to figure out who we’re asking. If you have a strong religious faith the answer to this is probably obvious to you, but that adds a whole other set of complications, like “why would God let this happen?” If you’re generally spiritual, like me, agnostic, or atheistic you may find there’s no specific place for your question to land which can lead to a frustrating exercise in logic often leaving you wondering at the purpose of existence in its entirety. Either of these circumstances create an incredibly heavy burden to bear.

The second challenge of “why” is, if we knew why would it make a difference? Let’s say hypothetically we could get an answer to why they died. Would any reason be good enough? Would we ever think, “sure that explanation justifies my loved one dying”? Would knowing why make us miss them less in those moments when we want to hug them or call them on the phone? Probably not.

Which leads to the third challenge of “why”; death defies explanation. We have no idea why one child develops cancer and their sibling doesn’t, or why someone is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or why some people can battle back addiction while others can’t. When it comes to death and grief there is never a definitive answer to the question of why. Being that we’re intelligent, curious, logical creatures, not having an answer to something is very difficult for humans to accept. So we wander back to the question of why again and again.

The tasks for us here are to understand that we’ll never truly know why they were the one to die, then eventually accept the not-knowing. It’s not what our brains are set up to do, so it takes work. I’m working one this & learning as I go. When I find my mind wandering back to why, I take a deep breath and gently remind myself that there are always going to be things beyond my knowing and this question of why is one of them. (Exerpt from an article on Grief Compass.com)

Larry Carlat, a grieving father, expresses this so well in his book, “A Space in the Heart”:

During the early days after Rob’s death, I had a million questions, but they always boiled down to one: why?

Why did Rob do it? Why did he do it the way that he did it? Why did he do it this time and not the other times when he threatened to do it? Why didn’t he let me help him this time? Why did he think it would be okay for all of us who loved him to be here without him? Why am I asking these questions when there’s nothing we can do to bring him back?

That last question was when I heard the proverbial needle scratch across a record, bringing my monkey mind to a screeching halt. It forced me to look at what I was really doing, specifically, trying to figure out a problem that already had a solution—the most unsatisfactory solution that there ever was.

I was trying to fix what I had always been able to fix with Rob, no matter what awful thing needed fixing. I was trying to think my way out of the pain and make this terrible nightmare go away. I was trying to get my little boy back.

You’ve probably asked your own whys, what ifs, and other futile questions about your child’s death and have likely arrived at similar unsatisfying answers. It’s completely normal to ask these questions. We all do it. When you love your child, you can’t take any form of no for an answer. We’re all seeking a way to explain the unexplainable, as if there was an explanation that could possibly provide relief.

Sometimes the answers to your questions are obvious and inevitable, like when your child succumbs to a long illness. Sometimes the answers are elusive—there was an accident or your child was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the death is a shock but not a surprise, as it was with Rob. And sometimes you’re just suffering so much that you’re searching for any answer that will make the torture stop, even for a short while.

So you question your child: how could you do this to us? You question yourself: how could we have let this happen? You question your faith: oh Lord, why did you take away our child so soon and what did we do to deserve this? I knew things were really bad when I started to question God, mainly because I’m not sure if I believe in Him. All the questions in the world, or out of this world, provide little solace.

Much like when everyone consoled you by saying, “There are no words,” there are no answers to any of your questions that can change what has happened. A Spanish Inquisition of yourself can help process your loss to a certain extent, but more often than not, it also dredges up feelings of guilt, blame, anger, and sadness, which you then use to punish yourself.

Beating up on yourself keeps you trapped in the past (if only you did . . . whatever you think you should’ve done to save them) or flings you into the future (if your child was still alive . . . you’d be a grandparent by now). But more than anything, it prevents you from being in the present—the only place that really matters when it comes to working through your grief.

Working through it takes all of your being. It takes strength you didn’t know you had. Incessant questioning often weighs you down and gets in the way. It keeps you stuck and prevents you from moving forward. It keeps you trapped inside your head when your heart needs your attention while it slowly begins to heal.

It’s your heart that must face what scares you most. It’s your heart that grows stronger and braver every time it encounters the grief beast. Your heart isn’t interested in any questions because it already knows all the answers.

You need to listen to your heart. You need to trust it. You need to give it time. You need to let it guide you through the darkness. Wherever it