Good Grief

Good Grief!? I have no idea where a phrase like that might have come from. I have a difficult time imagining that a person could actually have good grief. But then I think how some people might lose someone close to them and have no friends, family, or support to turn to. I guess that might make my grief “good” relative to their grief, since I do have a lot of support. But when someone very close to you dies, I have a hard time seeing anything good about it. All the support in the world doesn’t change that one fact…. i.e. for me, I no longer have my best friend and lover to share things with.

She is dead.

I have come to think of my grief like vomiting when you have a stomach malady. I’ll lay in bed feeling like I might start crying, but I’ve cried so much that I don’t want to cry any more. Just like the feeling I have when I need to throw up but I really don’t want to. So I’ll keep fighting it until suddenly I have to make a mad rush to the bathroom and puke my guts out. I hate that feeling of hanging over a toilet and heaving. But it feels so good afterwards. So I try to not cry, but finally just give in, and then I feel a little better…. For a while anyway. And the in between intervals keep gradually lengthening.

These days I have to deal with our culture’s “death avoidance” mentality. I’ve turned into a “death” leper. People avoid talking to me at work now. No one wants to talk about death. People seem to want to pity me, and offer condolences, but please don’t talk about death. It makes them uncomfortable. I really don’t blame them, because not too long ago I behaved the same way. I had no reference.

I have discovered that I now belong to a clique, a club. A club that no one wants to join. Membership just happens. But, a club that one person of nearly every couple in the world will gain unwanted membership in at some point during their lives.

I’ve found myself exploring the following aspects of human experience:

• Grief in general. The loss of someone close
• Caregiver guilt. Serving someone for many years
• Suicide. What if? If only….. Clues?
• Widower. Not anything like I’ve seen it portrayed on TV shows

When Jane died, I died. She physically died, and I died in other ways. No one seems to get it, except those who know the path I have just walked.

Jane ultimately gave me two gifts. I loved her like I have loved no one. Experiencing the joy of love together with her gave me the greatest gift of my life. Then Jane gave me the second gift, her death. A horrible gift that I did not want to have, but a gift none-the-less.

How can I call the death of someone I loved so much a gift? It sure doesn’t seem like it when I look at all the tears I have cried, and the horrible feelings of grief that just slam me up against a wall, and the utter alone feelings, and the silence, the never ending silence. I feel as though everything that mattered to me vanished, and all the “things” that used to matter to me, mean absolutely nothing to me anymore.

So what does matter? I think death does. I’ve considered that saying “Many paths, One truth” from a slightly different perspective. People arrive at death from many directions, but we all end up arriving at the same destination.

As a death leper, I realize that I have, to a certain extent, died before I died. What a shitty beautiful gift Jane gave me. I hope that I can use it wisely.