Grief is a Hole
Grief is a hole.
Not a pothole that makes the car jump when you graze is edges, but a sink hole that has swallowed everything you knew into itself and you’re left at the precipice trying to figure out how to stay stable, how to regain your bearings (because everything you knew is down there now), trying to navigate around the hole, and all while pretending nothing is wrong- and actually wondering if it would be just easier to succumb to the void.
Cancer-death grief isn’t a singular event that blows up like a comet hitting the earth creating the hole, but rather like the warning of danger - a lot like fire danger. There is grief when the fire has entered your city. Then fear and coping that is engaged when it’s in your neighborhood, followed by the panic when it’s on your block, and the shear terror when it is engulfing *your* home, where you abide.
The cancer-death grief proceeds when the patient has died to being like a rainstorm that follows the fire. At first, it’s sweet relief. No more suffering. No more pain. No more embers burning. But then the grief turns to a flood…followed by a landslide that takes out every semblance of what was left after the fire and muddies it and commingles it into a blasphemous mess. And you are there just witnessing the demise of everything you knew, every truth you believed, every experience you had…an utter mess. You’re left to try to pick thru the muddy, sloppy rubble, to find pieces of your former life and self, and to try to clean them up and fit them back together in some newly gilded jigsaw puzzle that will become your new life and self, the changed life and self, the never-again-what-once-was life and self.
And it is all done while tears blur your vision, thoughts jumble your thinking, feelings swell your heart to near bursting, and fatigue weighs you down like Sisyphus’ boulder.
Your desire to move forward is great, your need to keep pressing on is obvious, society’s unspoken expectation to be “fine” is palpable, so you try. Some days it’s not as much effort as others but some days are like moving through your world with concrete forming around every muscle making progress painful, difficult, and the longing to give up deep.
Grief is like a hole. Not a pothole. A sinkhole. It’s large, deeper than anything you could imagine, a terrifying and fascinating journey at the same time. Everything you once knew is muddled in there but a phoenix will rise from those ashes and that transformation is miraculous and beautiful. Truly a privilege to experience.
