Waves of grief

We always think we know something.

Until we realise we absolutely don’t.

I thought I had known sadness, for example. That was until the death of my grandfather unearthed chasms of sorrow I had yet to explore.

From there on in, I felt sure I had become well acquainted with the vastness of grief.

But that was until the cruel and untimely death of my niece, Darcy.

Just 20 years old, a car accident ripped her from us and our family apart. And grief transformed itself from being something of a static black and white entity to an evolving, three-dimensional presence in our lives.

My grief...

The grief of my husband...

The grief of my children

and of our wider family…

intertwined and grafted together like the healing of bone previously shattered; we reformed and were somehow still upright but we are by no means the same.

What I have come to learn is that until we each become aquatinted with the nuances of grief for ourselves, we’re all just standing, looking up, from the foot of a mountain.

Putting aside the vague comfort of knowing the treacherous journey ahead will take place on a well-worn path, the mountain itself is no less insurmountable.

So i’ve been trying - and failing - over several months to my committed these emotionally raw thoughts to paper.

Actually, this process began a matter of weeks after Darcy’s death while I was perched on a rock in the Outer Hebrides.

Dealing with my own mess of feelings, I retreated to an isolated beach and scrambled onto a ledge that jutted out from the side of a cliff face overlooking the Atlantic. It was summer but nothing in the elements alluded to it.

The combination of the bracing wind on my face and a deafening silence punctuated intermittently by waves smashing onto the shingle beach, seemed to usher in some sort of clarity.

As I watched foam form into waves and gently roll in one minute, I would see sea stacks being assaulted and pummelled by wild water the next.

An hour before, or an hour from then, and the waves would take longer to come in, or flush out.

A gust of wind, and height and depth would alter their form again.

There was no normal.

No usual.

No deep predictability.

Yet it felt primal; familiar.

It’s the reason my attempt to frame the process of bereavement and grief has taken on the form of a beach / water / wave-related metaphor.

If I had one hope in sharing this today it would be for this to resonate, with even one person, so that comfort could come through solidarity. There’s something intrinsically human about the need to be seen and known, even in our isolation.

It may also, perhaps, help remove some of the guilt that so often catches us off guard when we catch ourselves having fun, or when we are forced to acknowledge that some semblance of normality has returned to this grief-ruined life.

———————-

Waves of grief: encountering the ebb and flow of bereavement

On summer days as the sun’s warmth kisses my brow, and heats my hair, grief playfully dances in, tickling my toes.

I haven’t gone looking for it but lukewarm waves ‘tag’ my bare feet before running away like mischievous children, giggling.

Grief remains, but on those days it lingers only in the periphery - and with it a joy of happy rememberings.

Then, for the briefest of moments, it is somehow a comfort; a reminder of the good, that although gone, was once mine to behold.

Grief touches me in moments like this and I smile. Though recoiling at first and taking a sharp intake of breath, I’m compelled to step back in. The all too familiar deep-set pain is eclipsed, momentarily, by a visceral longing to think of you.

Like finding an old photo, I smile then tuck it safely away once more; I can’t bare to even believe the sadness has somehow evolved.

I don’t want it to.

But I want it to.

——

Then there are the seasons, months - even moments - forged in the pressing on.

Head down, umbrella up. One step in front of another.

There never seems time, in these days, to linger in the caress of fond memories, or even to tarry in pain.

It’s not until something significant happens a distance from shore - seemingly without connection to our own situation, that the seas begin to change and the crests return with gathering frequency and height.

Bigger and bigger.

Closer and closer.

It takes the sudden sting of a rogue wave clipping ankles, or the salty spray of unwelcome cold water to the face, to hijack the monotonous calm; to interrupt ‘normality’.

Where did that come from?

The heart quickens... it came from the sea!

How could I forget the sea?

What kind of person forgets to remember the sea?

Oh for the days before the sea.

——

Out of my depth.

When the elements collide, the arrogance of believing an untameable sea could somehow be mastered is never more poignant.

Tumultuous and chaotic, the water circles like a shark. Flood defences weaken and hearts are laid bare.

Just when I dared to believe it was possible to attain some level of mastery over these new rhythms of life; to become accustomed to a new ebb and a new flow,

without warning

a tsunami strikes.

There’s no fondness then,

no happy memories.

It’s a fight for survival.

Push it away,

push it down…

Must stay above water.

Must not allow this vast, cold, heaviness to fill my lungs.

Enveloped, the battle rages internally.

Shall I relent to the exhaustion?

No, that’s not what she would want!

Trying to beat a force of nature is futile.

Just stay afloat. No storm has ever not ended.

Then,

as quickly as it crashed its way in

It draws itself back.

The tide has gone out.

The beach is clear.

Water meets sunlight and its rays refract: hope glimmers once more.

Back to normal.

The new, unwanted normal.

Ebb and flow.

Joy and Pain.

Ebb and flow.

Peace and turmoil.

Ebb and flow.

——-