DELAYED NOT DENIED: GRIEF EDITION, PT. 2
Continued from Part 1…
What did Grief look like when it got here? Well, I’m glad you asked. It showed up like the Grim Reaper at my front door wearing its black, hooded coat, with its hook for an arm that grabbed me by the throat as soon as I opened the door. Just kidding. I didn’t know it was here you see, but there were signs. What I noticed was that I began to not see the road as I was driving. My vision was blurry from crying all of a sudden. There were days when I needed to pull off the road so as to not cause an accident. The tears flowed hot and heavy whenever, wherever. It didn’t matter where I was; at work, the supermarket or at the gym, the tears were always waiting right below the surface; waiting to take centre stage at the drop of a hat. Then came the guttural cries, screams more like it. The kind that you have to muffle with a pillow, or go inside your car to do so as to not worry your family. The kind that came and left me writhing in pain in the shower with water soaking me from head to toe. I heard sounds coming from my body that I have never heard before and that I did not know I could ever make. It was a deep growl, sometimes high-pitched screams, sometimes low sobs that would shake my entire body leaving me exhausted and spent after a session. Whenever one of these episodes came on, I would find myself clutching at my chest trying to get to my heart. I wanted desperately to hush it, to hold it in my arms and soothe it until the pain stopped. But I couldn’t reach it. This was when I discovered that heart-break wasn’t just a term, it was a literal condition. My heart was in so much pain, it was in as much physical pain as though I had broken an arm or a leg or any other part of my body. And just as one needs a cast and treatment for a broken limb, the heart was no different. Except, there are no casts or balms that can be placed on a broken heart to mend it. There was no Panadol or morphine I could inject into it. I had to endure it.
I realized too that there was a pattern to when these ‘outbursts’ would take place, and this was mainly after a gym session. I had been using the gym as a sort of distraction from the pain of losing Collette - increasing my attendance rate from a mere two days per week to sometimes twice per day, everyday. It was only sheer physical exhaustion that kept me out of the gym. I remember being in the gym one Sunday night after already going there that morning, and when I was too exhausted to do anything that’s when it hit me, I must have gone crazy. I was in an empty gym with only a handful of people on a Sunday night when I should be resting for work the next day. I would have done anything to keep the thoughts, the memories away. Not memories of Collette, but memories of the anguish of her last days. Her last days were truly horrible, details I am not yet ready to divulge, but to say it has greatly reduced or removed my trust in the healthcare system would be a gross understatement. So yes, I needed to get the images, the smell, the sounds, all of it out of my mind. I found that when I channeled my pain into lifting iron that was sometimes far too heavy for a woman to lift, I somehow felt better. I was able to transfer the pain from my mind and my heart to my physical body, somewhere I felt was a bit stronger to carry it - albeit temporarily. In the gym, I felt safe, hidden and I had a channel through which to export my pain. So I became addicted to it, especially because after each gym session I would get a huge deposit of Dopamine - the “feel-good” hormone, which acted as a chemical messenger sending signals to my brain that I felt fabulous after each workout. So, imagine my surprise when these “outbursts” as I call them started coming after each workout session. The link between a good workout and a good cry I have not yet figured out. Maybe one of you out there who studies this kind of thing can share it with me, but there was something that happened in my body after I left the gym that just caused everything inside of me that I had been holding on to to just release. I would sit in my car morning after morning after arriving home from the gym, and be lost in one of those deep guttural cries, my body shaking all over desperately clutching at my chest to make the pain there go away - snot running down my nose, breathlessly wailing until I was too exhausted to go on.
It’s been two years since Collette passed away, and the grief has not left nor has it wavered. There are still random outbursts, albeit not as unintentionally theatrical as they used to be at first. There are still bouts of sadness in the middle of the day where I would just go be by myself to allow hot tears to silently run down my face. You see, everything reminds me of Collette and so it’s hard to escape the memory of her - not that I would want to. Whether it be a pair of earrings that I’m wearing out to dinner only to remember, “ah, Collette gave me these earrings”. Or a lipstick that I am pasting onto my lips and I would smile as I remember “ah, Collette gave me this lipstick”. Or watering my plants only to remember, “Collette gave me this Fern, or this bag, this flower pot, these shoes”. Recognize a pattern there? Yeah me too, she showed her love through giving too. I didn’t realize it at the time, I even thought it was normal and came to expect it because we were ‘sisters’, how much she loved to give. It is moments like these when the “if-only” taunts and the regrets come. If only I had done more to show her just how much I love her. If only I had made time to see her more after we became adults and not be so busy with my own life. If only I had taken the time to get to know her better towards the end, her own dreams, her own ideas. If only I had taken our disagreements as a moment to understand and not to get mad. So many regrets. So many things said that shouldn’t have been said, so much time lost from being mad at each other. Too many unnecessary bickering that siblings do that rob us of the precious, fleeting time that we have with each other. You hear stuff like this all the time, but you can never really understand well-enough to take it seriously until it happens to you.
Additionally, I can often tell that there are certain people around me, some friends and family, who are uncomfortable being in my presence while I grieve. Someone close to me even expressed to me that my grief seemed to be ‘extended’ for lack of a better term - suggesting that my moods had been going on for too long. That’s the next surprising thing I realized. The people around you who know you one way has not yet realized that once you go through an experience like this, that you are forever changed. There is no going back to the you you once were. There is no going back to normalcy. You will have to craft a new normal, forge a new path ahead. The people around me, understandably, don’t know how to be or what to say to me, and I get it. I don’t require words, just presence - support. Sometimes it seems that even that is too much to ask. And don’t get me wrong, many will be there and show up, but they can’t stay forever. I will have to be left alone at some point. That’s where God comes in. I’ve learnt that only He alone is equipped to be there for me and with me every second of every minute of every day….even when I didn’t want Him to be. I was so angry with God, I couldn’t even stand to look at a Bible or hear a Gospel song. But that’s a story for another time. As I was saying, many of the people around me want me to hurry this up, to go back to being the Collena they know and love. But I can tell them right here, right now, that is never going to happen. Not even I recognize this person looking back at me in the mirror, so I don’t expect you to either. But there is one thing I do know, I am not going be shamed or guilted into pretending that I am not sad everyday. Because I am. I am not going to be bullied into ‘hurrying this along’ so that you can start feeling comfortable in my presence again. I am going to be sad and I am going to cry wherever and whenever I choose to - not that I have much choice in the matter, my body does the choosing for me. I have given myself permission to grieve for as long as I need to. Whether it be two years later or twenty years from now, my grief is a representation of the love I have - not had - for my sister. Grief is love, and as far as I can see, the more you love that person, the longer it will take. But I am also empathetic to the fact that this is a very personal and individualistic journey, so I do not hold it against anyone who does not know how to show up for me. But I also ask that they extend the same grace and not hold it against me either when I do not show up for them in the ways that I used to.
