I started reading a book about grief yesterday. (I know, sounds fun doesn't it?). One phrase jumped out at me: you have to choose to enter grief.
Then I thought about the first stage in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of grief: denial. I've always hated that word. From the moment I heard about my husband's death, I've fought that word. I have experienced disbelief, numbness, fog-in-the-mind and resistance but not denial. I know that he died. I have not seen him walking along the street or heard him call my name in the house. It's been more like an awareness of ghosts in places we always were (I still can't go to the mall in town for that reason - it's just too painful).
But denial? That sounds like avoiding reality, or pretending everything is okay when it isn't.
This book, this sentence really shed some new light for me. Grief is not fun, and it's understandable that avoiding it, or skirting around it seems like the best option. But how do you move on when there is a big lump of emptiness in front of you? Some people can. And that's when I realized...
It's a choice to enter into grief.
At first, I didn't want to. I wanted it to all be a terrible dream that would wake up from, while knowing it wasn't and somehow this was my reality. Gradually the mind takes it in and it seeps down into the rest of the body. It took quite a few months for the shock to wear off and the reality to start to hit. It was at least 9 months before I really realized what had happened. AND THEN, I had to make a decision to enter grief.
This book had it right. I spent quite a few months in shock, in fog, skirting around the reality that I didn't want to accept. I didn't want to be a widow instead of a wife. I didn't want my husband to be dead, in the way he died. I didn't want this to be true. I didn't want my life (and honestly, I still don't want it that much).
So maybe this is what denial is. I called it numbness, but now that I look at it, there is an element of denial too. I wasn't denying that my husband died, I was denying the need to invest time (and lots of it) to journey through the grief. I knew it would take a long time. I didn't want it to be long. I wanted to feel normal again.
But in time and with the help of some wise people, I learned that I had to go through the grief. I had to choose to enter and experience the emotions. But then, I also had to choose to let them out, to keep moving through and not stop. Normal is gone, but I will find another normal on the other side of this. When I'm ready, it will come together.
Or, I could get stuck. And that scares me.
My mum was a young widow too - my dad died when she was 32. She joined a widows and widowers group after a "strong nudge" from her mother-in-law, my grandmother (who, incidentally was very good at "strong nudges"!!). In a year or so, she was asked to lead the group, and I remember one lady she used to talk to on the phone. This lady's husband had died 8 or so years before, and she was still in the support group. She was still grieving for her husband like he had died a short time ago. Now, I realize that we all grieve differently, but after 8 years it starts to feel more like being stuck than being a slow processor.
As this book said, we have to choose to leave grief as well. There is a time when it's a choice to accept and embrace what is new, however we ended up in this place.
I'm not there yet. Give me another year and then we'll see. I can't take my wedding rings off yet. The weight of sadness is still heavy upon me. The trauma is still deep within my heart and psyche. But I know that there will need to be a time when I stand up and take a breath and choose to move into the next chapter of my life.
It is easy for me to say that someone is avoiding grief if they don't seem to be dealing with the emotions, or are keeping everything as it was the day before their spouses died, or if they remarry quickly and move into a new relationship before really moving out of the old one. But that's judgement. Who am I to say? We only know in our hearts what we are really doing and feeling. God knows our hearts even if we don't.
I must choose to grieve, and some days I choose to hold back. Some days I would far rather just feel good, or feel "normal" (whatever that means, because my life as I know it is completely different from what it was two years ago and what it was even a year ago).
And then, in time, I will need to choose to leave grief.
There is that wonderful passage in Joshua 1, where God says (this is my paraphrase): "Moses is dead. It's time to stop grieving. Get up and start leading my people into the Promised Land. There is a long road ahead but I will be with you. Every piece of land you set your feet on will be yours. Do not be afraid for I am with you."
If you're ready for it, let this be your word for today. I am reaching for it. One day it will be mine too.
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