Grief Is No Game. Help Exists.
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I love card games in which a player must bid: Hearts, 500, Euchre, Bridge. Bidding when playing cards asks me to balance risk with reality. What can I do with the cards in my hand, and what do I think I can do once I factor in luck, a partner’s hand, the cards I will draw? I especially love a game which also involves declaring a trump suit and one that identifies wild cards.
When it comes to grief, though, there are no trump suits, trump cards, wild cards to ease it, no way of outbidding grief. Grief is grief is grief is grief.
Sometimes we humans cling to “a hierarchy of grief”. Or, and maybe you can relate to this, recalling when someone – in trying to comfort you – says something like, “I want to share with you about Aunt Mildred’s grief and how she recovered.” This instinct to distract someone from feeling grief usually comforts the non-grieving speaker. Yet it causes the griever to abandon her/his/their feelings in order to listen or to think they should smother their feelings.
What I’ve learned in Version 7.1 (seventh decade, first year) of my life about grief are these five lessons:
Lesson One: Grief wallops someone who is grieving, no matter the source, be it death of a friend, relative, or pet; divorce; estrangement; job loss or demotion; illness; a pandemic; a business closing; retirement; empty-nest syndrome; moving, and so many other sources. Grief is personal, and the causes are personal.
Lesson Two: Grief descends on each griever uniquely. No hierarchy of grief exists. This reality is why we are caught off-guard when grief rains down upon us. I have a friend who discovered in a particularly bleak period recently that her sadness in reality was pushed-away grief from losing a beloved dog two years earlier. She unearthed it by listening to herself and asking someone else to process with her. No one’s grief trumps another’s grief.
Lesson Three: Those who are grieving will ask for our stories if it helps them. Otherwise, they are seeking to our active listening. This can be uncomfortable for the listener, who may be unfamiliar with the subject or pushing away personal grief. Listening to the grieving helps more than telling your stories.
Lesson Four: As with all emotions, easing grief involves embodying it, feeling it, and acknowledging it as “felt sense”. A grief counselor, therapist, or grief circle can help. This is critical when griefs pile up. Emotions felt are emotions released.
Lesson Five: Even when it becomes softer, grief may revisit every so often. When it arrives, invite grief in for a visit like as old friend so it ease and leave.
When grief comes calling, it rarely arrives alone. It’s complicated and many-layered. Sometimes guilt accompanies it. Sometimes relief accompanies – the innate gratitude that the loved one no longer suffers is common – and inadvertently triggers more guilt. This is when learning the beauty of living in the world of “and” rather than the one of “but” – “I feel relief, and I feel guilt” – takes away some of the power from the dueling opposite emotions. It is precisely in holding the opposites at the same time that ends the duel. Living in the world of “and” helps us to understand that no emotion is forever vanquished.
When grief places its vise-like grip around our minds and hearts, as with all emotions inviting it in instead of pushing it away sets it free to leave or ease. As we invite it in, we can become aware of its effect on our bodies: “Oh, this is what grief feels like.” Or “This is where I feel grief (heart, low back, knees – wherever).” In the feeling and the processing - this always sounds counter-intuitive to me though I’ve learned from direct experience that it isn’t - strong emotions dissipate more easily. Each of grief’s potential posse of emotions, once invited in, will leave in their turn, too. As these uninvited guests leave our bodies, we reclaim our equilibrium, and the emotional waves flatten. We slowly learn that we are building acceptance, understanding, and resilience.
I’m still surprised when grief comes calling even four years after Mom died. Or fifteen years after Dad did. Now when it does, I let the emotions wash over me, I recite the lovingkindness meditation, I stop and feel grief in by body. As I do, my breath deepens, my heart rate drops, my mind stabilizes. Suddenly, I realize – grief decided to leave. At least for a while.
Grief is no game, it cannot be defeated because it is an emotion, a phenomenon that arrives and passes. You cannot bid your way out of out of it or by using a wild card or a partner’s cards . You can, though, work with it with a guide, feel it, wrap your arms around it, and watch it slip away.
Grief is no game. Help exists.
