For me, it is impossible to quantify grief. To qualify it. To define it. It comes as a surprise. It comes as a wave. It comes suddenly. Or it comes on slow. It can feel like nostalgia, anger, sadness, gratitude, drowning. It can be triggered. It can be low grade. It can be reassuring. It can be overwhelming.
Journal entry: November 3, 2012
The emotion of missing. What is it?
Saudade is a unique Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English. Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return. It’s related to the feelings of longing, yearning. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again… It can be described as an emptiness and the individual feels this absence… In fact, one can have ‘saudades’ of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future. source
As the numbness wears off after Dad passed away on October 25, I find myself longing for that numbness again. Now I feel the familiar sense of fear- sort of like walking on a unsteady pier or a balance beam that wobbles or a tightrope over a waterfall. I am flooded with thoughts of doubt. Did I do enough? Should I have been more aggressive in getting treatment for Dad earlier? Should I have taken him for more walks in the electric wheelchair? Was he lonely and scared at the end? These are expected thoughts. I know that. They are not to be avoided or feared. It’s the process we all experience as we walk through grief. I get it. I dare to look. But it hurts.
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My various experiences of loss and experiences of grief are not like yours, or hers, or his or theirs. Mine takes up a different space, shape, beyond time. Shifting, eternal. Each one of our personal truths are unique. Profound.
And as saudadic waves wash over me, I find it healing to explore:
SOME PORTRAITS OF GRIEF
Beverley Pomeroy:
August 2, 2016: Living Grief is the profound journey of ongoing loss; where we can neither grief nor celebrate. Yet, our loss is palpable. We feel it wrapped around our throat choking back vulnerability we’ve not ever experienced before. We journey through acceptance, make friends with physiological depression, butt up against anger, bargain with whoever or whatever holds our conscience…ultimately, finding the sweet spot of denial where we can see and be what ‘is’ and live in the joy of where we are at on our journey with our loved one.
My gorgeous daughter, Sophia, turns 16 tomorrow…16 years more than we expected to have her, 15 years later with a palliative designation. Tomorrow I will be swallowed up in denial…and will let joy breathe for me, filling up my lungs until I can cry no more and the melancholy rocks my broken heart to sleep.
It is like a play…and even though we know there will be a final act, we so desperately cling to the idea of it being never ending, no matter what.
Beverley is a passionate advocate, social intrapreneur, Community Engagement Strategist, LGBTQA speaker, author of Living Grief. beverleypomeroy.com
Patton Oswalt:
… If you spend 102 days completely focused on ONE thing you can achieve miracles. Make a film, write a novel, get MMA ripped, kick heroin, learn a language, travel around the world. Fall in love with someone. Get ’em to love you back.
But 102 days at the mercy of grief and loss feels like 102 years and you have shit to show for it. You will not be physically healthier. You will not feel “wiser.” You will not have “closure.” You will not have “perspective” or “resilience” or “a new sense of self.” You WILL have solid knowledge of fear, exhaustion and a new appreciation for the randomness and horror of the universe. And you’ll also realize that 102 days is nothing but a warm-up for things to come.
And…
You will have been shown new levels of humanity and grace and intelligence by your family and friends. They will show up for you, physically and emotionally, in ways which make you take careful note, and say to yourself, “Make sure to try to do that for someone else someday.” Complete strangers will send you genuinely touching messages on Facebook and Twitter, or will somehow figure out your address to send you letters which you’ll keep and re-read ’cause you can’t believe how helpful they are… Read more
C.S. Lewis:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear…
For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time. – A Grief Observed
Shakespeare:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart? – Macbeth Act 5, Scene 3, Page 3
William Cowper:
Encompass’d with a thousand dangers,
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors… I… in fleshy tomb, am
Buried above ground.
Cat Webb:
There will be a moment where a memory will hit, or a milestone day, or just a moment of being overwhelmed with something seemingly unrelated… and grief pops up again. AND THAT IS OK!!! More than ok… this is normal… your sadness about your loved ones death is normal… Your grief is normal and essential for your healing. There is no wrong way to do grief other than to pretend it isn’t there… Denying grief is the same as trying to convince your subconscious that there was no love here, no good times to remember, and this person meant nothing to me. READ MORE
Kay Jamison:
There is a sanity to grief… given to all, [grief] is a generative and human thing…it acts to preserve the self.
Adjust yourself.
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There are no easy answers. There is just process. And breathing. In and out.
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