It's true!
Grief gives in a way that joy cannot. It isn't better than joy but it has unequaled potential hidden away deep inside.
Now you're either nodding your head because in some weird way this makes sense to you, or you’re wondering if I fell on my head as a child.
Either way, you're right!
However, brain damage notwithstanding, grief is indeed a strange animal. I don't think I'll ever get over the dichotomy of a body, intact and suddenly lifeless. It feels confounding that one cannot simply shake it, or yell loudly to wake it.
The shocking suddenness of it, even after a long illness, is equally daunting to wrap the mind around. You then have the empty space where once they existed; the sound of their footfalls, the way they breathed, the habits that required attention in some way- every day. The dance, all the interactive-ness of their being here no longer requires us to notice. It does not wrestle for our attention and our caring is no longer required. We have been let-go. Everything is different now because one thing has changed. The nature of this change shifts everything, within and without, to an unfamiliar place where the air is far too still.
The grief which follows a loved one’s release from life is an experience that gives entirely of itself. I have a mnemonic that I use with clients in my Good-Grief program:
Gift Intended for Transformation –G.I.F.T.
The operative word, of course, is 'intended'. The intention isn’t from some exterior source. Instead, it is a deeply personal intention to accept that change is present in spite of its rude entry. It is the intention to commemorate one’s love, and one’s service to that love. It is the intention to bind our now unrequited love to something greater than regret and sorrow. Intention has a kind of re-routing effect of the natural tendency to linger too long where one wishes that life not be long without the loved one. It gently silences the need to ask “why”, at least for any longer than the ravenous seed of purpose would allow. We put our grief to work you see, we give it a job.
The idea is to be brazen, defiant if you like, in the face of pain and to challenge the grief itself to become useful. Dare it to carry you and then leave you someplace you long to be, and to do this before it takes its leave of you.
The work is in harnessing the energy of the strong emotions heralded by this change-event. Determine to groom the heart dotingly, moment by moment, willing it toward a new face for the lost love; allow the image of them to transform into the thing you might dare to say, “If I must give up _______(name), then I damn well want _______(the thing that will honor them and transform your life).
Here’s the compliment you pay your loved one; “because I loved you, I will become more than I was. I will this grief to make the rest of my life reflect your importance to anything I do from here on. I loved you; I love you still; and in my transformation you become more than a memory, you become essence and the essential key to the life I have left.” Though they left us to go on in the cold without them, they left us the one thing that can radically prepare us for a life we never dreamed of before. They left us the gift of grief that gives of itself, and asks us to find our life again, through it, softly, slowly, gently, intentionally and defiantly. Not around it, or over it; and don’t avoid it because you cannot anyway.
"I wish I knew the beauty of leaves falling. To whom are we beautiful as we go?" David Ignatow
Let’s look at this from a more personal point of view; our own.
I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I can’t imagine truer immortality than through the life of another. If, the last significant act of my life; my death, gave someone a significant leg up toward the larger meaning of their own lives, their own legacy, I believe I would be smiling throughout eternity. If it turns out that the price of Purpose is two-for-one, so be it. Two lives for one, okay. If in death my loved one uses grief to uncover, or create more purpose in their life, rather than less … well, how could I refuse? To be useful… in the end it is what we all want, isn’t it? Then let death and grief be useful too. Waste none of it. Oh, what a waste it would be to endure such a thing and gain nothing in return that caused one to say, “I did not ask for this grief, but without it I would not have _______( founded my charity, traveled to Africa, learned to fly planes, volunteered in the third world, etc) .
In launching a campaign for what we deeply want for our life (something other than wishing our dead loved one back to life), and to do it from the onset of our grief, we tap into a major power-source. This eventually transmutes our love (often still very much alive) into a kind of spring that unlocks our courage and feeds our strength. A legacy is built simultaneously for those who grieve and the ones they grieve for. Such a legacy becomes a bridge between them, that flows in both directions, over a wide and eternal Now. We cannot change death. We all die and everyone we love will die also. So now what? How will you take that on?
When I think of the times I have grieved I sense a deep weariness within me, like a residue deep in my bones. However, when grief returns I will offer it a cup of tea. Then I will proceed to flog it! Only when I am exhausted will I cry myself to sleep knowing that in the morning my work will be cut out for me …until it is done. Through practice I know that Grief is a dark and beautiful gift left to us in place of goodbye.
