Tag Archives: life after loss

In Grief’s Silence

There’s a phenomenon that occurs anytime someone finds themself in a foreign land where they do not know or speak the language.  Even though it is an uncomfortable stage of acculturation, it’s actually a vital part of becoming a member of a new culture or Way of life. 

It’s called “the silent period.”  

During this time, a person is inundated with so many unrecognizable sounds and experiences from an unrecognizable culture, that they can’t even make an attempt to articulate what they are experiencing, so they walk around mostly silent.  Anytime they do try to speak, they aren’t quite able to convey exactly what they were meaning to, so they retreat back into observing the world around them until the words that they are looking for are within their grasp.    

To the outside world, when someone is in their “silent period,” it often looks like they aren’t finding any meaning in their surroundings, but, ironically, they are actually deeply engaged with all that is going on while their eyes, ears, mouth and brain try to put everything together.   

Oftentimes when people attempt to rush out of this silent period, they will often misuse words and confuse concepts, but even those mistakes are a crucial part of learning a new language.  

People can stay in this silent period for a long time; it is just how humans are.  We are able to take in and understand our experiences long before we are able to speak about them meaningfully.  

Irregardless of how long we are there, it is necessary to go through this silent period so we can arrive at a stage which is simply referred to as “the home stage:” a stage where the person feels completely settled into a new way of life.  

 But when the words finally do come, when we are able to articulate what we were taking in for all those months and years, the words often come pouring out like water from a spring that had been lying in anticipation for someone to dig deep enough to find it.

This is how I would describe my experience of being taken to the foreign lands of grief.  

I entered into a “silent period” of my own… wandering alone in the deserts for years, acutely  aware that things were happening around me, but unable to put them into words.   And though I knew deep down that Someone was leading me through this desert, I did not know who or what was walking with me, step by step, to higher and more solid ground.  

It’s now when I look back that I can see very clearly where I was and Who I was with: I was the prodigal child wrapped in the arms of her loving Father who was whispering to her all the words she needed to hear but, as of yet, could not understand.  I didn’t quite know how to put into words that I was experiencing “being found” because I had never fully been aware that I was ever lost. 

So I stayed in that embrace like a suffering patient being held by a doctor who kept whispering over and over in a language she didn’t understand: “you will be made well again.  I am making you well.”  

The silent stage is different for all people, but we all experience it when we are in a strange and unfamiliar place.  And when it comes to the places grief takes us, where all of the signs are indiscernible, and the roads all seem circular, I can understand why I stayed spiritually mute for years while my Father continued to whisper as I suffered in my silence.  

But then the words started to come.   At first, it was just words and phrases which I would hesitantly and self consciously speak out of my silence…

God.

Is real.  

He is for me.  

I am his.  

The simplest phrases with deep, profound meanings that I could only understand in the silence of my heart.  These words, simple as they may be, were enough to illuminate the place where all my wayward missteps and the agony of grief had gotten me: to the foot of The Cross.  

And it was only when realizing where I was that the words God had been speaking to me while in His embrace were given to me, and I found myself finally being able to say what I could not before: 

That I am the daughter of the Most High King. 

That my Father has put to death all that was meant to torment me.  

And that death itself, and the grief it leaves in its wake, has been crushed under the weight of The Cross on which my God hangs.  

That I will be well. 

That all things shall be well.  

I found myself saying these words, and I still find myself saying these words as I gaze up at The Cross with a full recognition of what those words mean and why it took me so long to be able to say them and how those words cast a light on the shadowlands of grief. 

It took me years of being in my “silent period” to finally get to a place I never knew I was missing but to which I was always being called…

To finally get me home.  

I Didn’t Want a Life That Would Make, “A Great Book”

I cannot stress enough how much writing has served me in the months since John died.  Writing has allowed me to illuminate the saturated murkiness of deep grief in a way that continues to surprise, and at times, exhaust me.

Even though the aftermath of loss is where people typically find themselves with, “no words,”  I, for some reason, have been able to find many.

And so I’ve written them.

I’ve written about the love me and John had and continue to have.  I’ve written about what it felt like to have met him and why it mattered so much. I’ve transcribed the events that led up to the night he died trying to get out of his plane during a routine landing.  And I’ve written at length about how my life has unfolded since.

Writing has served to cauterize the deepest and most gruesome parts of this experience, as well as to illuminate the  incomprehensible moments of re-connection that I’ve been blessed with since the accident.  My writing has connected me to so many others whose journeys run parallel to mine, and I believe it will find its way to people who need it down the line.

My writing has helped me, and so I’ve continued to write.

My writing has also led to many of my closest friends and family earnestly telling me the one thing that almost everyone who faces a tragedy hears at some point:  That one day, I should write a book about all this.

(Believe me when I say that I take this as a compliment).

People have urged me to write a book about the life I had before John.  My relationship with him.  And the healing I’ve undergone since his death.  Almost every widow I know has been urged to do this.

Some do.  Some don’t.  But all our stories, untold or not, really would make for great reading.

I, speaking for myself, find the task deliriously daunting.

Maybe at some point in my life, I will be able to pluck out a single thread in this Gordian Knot of an experience, but until then I think what I want to say most is this:  that my life… this life that would make a great book…I truly wish I did not have it.

I wish it so very much.

I wish my relationship with John didn’t have to be described as “epic.”

I wish I didn’t learn first hand how death can open people’s hearts, only for them to realize that it’s too late for it to do anyone much good.

I didn’t want a life where I watched one of the kindest humans anyone has ever known die.  And I didn’t want a life where I learned that I could survive that kind of pain.

I most definitely did not want a life where some people think I’ve lost my mind because I can see John’s love manifested in dreams and cell phone glitches and balloons.

I did not want to be a seeker. I did not want  wisdom.  I did not want to be an example of strength.  I did not want any part of this life. 

No one would.

I wanted what almost everyone else I know wants…the norm.  I wanted a benign life, yet I was given this one.  And I know people want to read about it because I probably would too.

I suppose the easiest thing to read about are the difficult lives people lead.

But I don’t want a book about me and John because between the romance, obstacles, tragedy (and eventual magic) that our relationship carried with it, I feel we were really more the “fairy tale” type.  I don’t think many people could disagree.

I want our stories to be told in times where immediate comfort is needed, even if that means our names will eventually get lost to time.

I want people to hear about us so they fight for and forgive those they are lucky enough to love in this life.

And I hope, at some point, the story of the time John sent me quarters makes its way to a grieving person who needs to hear it.  I want people to hear about “some pilot” who shows up in kids dreams because he really wants to talk about planes.  I want people to look at red balloons and think, for just a second, that maybe there is more to this life than what meets the eye.

I want nothing more than for these stories to be shared and told…so I will keep writing.  I want nothing more than for people to find hope and re-connection after they lose someone, so I will keep writing.  I feel like it is what I was meant to do, so I will just keep writing.

But I also wish with all my heart that I was the one hearing and reading these stories, not the one writing them.

I don’t want to be living through the difficulties that make for easy reading, no matter how great the book would be.

You wouldn’t either.

 

A Few Words For The Newly Widowed

My newly widowed friend,

I write to you knowing how hollow words sound right about now.

I know “this” feels impossible.   Whatever “this” is, does not feel survivable.

“This” feels like dying.

Contrary to what you may think, there are words for what you’re feeling, but they aren’t the right ones.  They don’t fit.  Language falls short of what “this” is.

You can try to put some sentences together, but don’t be surprised if they come out jagged.  Truncated.  Cut off at the knees.  Disfigured.

Best you stick to simple words.  Words like anguish.  Shattered.  Dissolved.  Faded.

I know it feels like your brain has been dropped in acid.  And the circuitry that once ran clearly is now smoldering.  I know the air you’re breathing feels clotted.   It doesn’t seem to carry sound.  Or warmth.  Or light.

I know that breathing feels like choking down glass.

And while your brain is dissolving into itself, people are asking you impossible questions.  Questions like: what do you want to eat?  Are you thirsty?  Would you like to put a movie on?  …Are you okay? 

The questions are horrifying.

And I know that if you could figure out how to make your brain tell your mouth to open and then tell your lungs to breathe in and then contract while your vocal chords squeezed together…if you could figure out how to make your brain do that, you would start screaming.  But you can’t.

So you sit there. And shrug.  And nod.

You sit on a couch.  Feral. And do what you’re going to be doing for a long time: you mimic a human.

People are coming to see you.  They talk at you.  You don’t understand how they can’t see that they’re talking to a husk.  

You’re pretty sure this is how animals live:

Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response. Sleep. Pain. Repeat.

People tell you that you, “sound great.”  That you, “look better than expected.”  And the air carries the sound their mouths are making.  And your ears take the message to your brain. And your brain is maybe making your body do and say things which makes people think you’re, “doing well.”  But you can’t really be sure.  

But I know you’re starting to be sure of something…

You realize that the “spirit” is very real.  And very different than the body.

I never believed in the “soul” until John died.  But if you’re like me…you can now, somehow, feel your soul twisting inside you.  Violently.

You can feel it hurling itself wildly against the cage of your pathetic, useless body.  You sense your spirit retching inside of you.  Convulsing.  Squirming. Begging to be let out…to go…to be free.

You feel it clawing. And whimpering.  You sense it trying to break through your bones and carve its way out of your flesh so that it can just…go.  You want to help it by cracking the shell of your body open, just a little bit.  Maybe you can just dig your fingers into the skin above your collar bones and rip off a bit of the casing your soul is stuck under.

But you don’t.  Because your brain reminds you that humans don’t peel themselves.  And right now…you’re mimicking a human.

My newly widowed friend,  I know that you’re thinking all these things and you’re feeling these things, and that people are smiling at you and telling you that, “you’re being really strong.”  And that they believe it.

This dumbfounds you.

The fact that people think that they’re talking to the real you astounds you.  That people think the real you showed up to work…that the real you is smiling in pictures and telling  stories at the funeral and going grocery shopping.

My newly widowed friend, I know the real you hasn’t done any of those things.  I know the real you is stuck inside a body.   A body that spends its time looking up things like the average life expectancy of a human… and then subtracting its age from the number… and then crying at the double digit number of years it statistically has left.

My newly widowed friend, I know the idea of living makes you sick.

And I know you’re probably reading these words from the floor of wherever your body lives.  The floor of a bedroom or bathroom. The floor next to a bed you didn’t leave for  four days; a bed that now smells a little like damp socks.

My newly widowed friend, I often wondered why I spent so much time sitting on floors right after John died…and now I think it was my body’s attempt to keep my spirit as grounded as possible.  As close to the Earth’s density as it could.

We sit on floors.  And we mimic being human.  We make the sounds we’re supposed to.  Our faces do human things.  And we eat human food.  And we mimic.  This is what newly widowed people do.

I know you’re probably reading this while you’re hunched over.  You’re probably alone now, so you don’t have to mimic as hard.  You can sit crooked.  Misaligned.  Your breathing can go back to being labored.

It’s just you and me now.  So I want to say some human words to you that I know you will not believe because you have no reason to.

But hear me out anyways, please:

My newly widowed friend, please know that right now, mimicking a human is your only choice.  All you can do is mimic.  And breathe.  And feed your body.  And drink water.  All while your spirit hemorrhages inside you.

My newly widowed friend, please…sit on as many floors as you need to.

And say all the things people say you shouldn’t.  And be angry at people who don’t deserve it.  And let text messages go unanswered.  And watch as people use your person’s coffin as their own personal soap box or stage.  And let your spirit wail.

Please sit down as long as you need to, and mimic the human you used to be and keep breathing.  Breathe those breaths.

Breathe glass.  Breathe pain.  Breathe unfairness.  Fuck life.  Fuck people.  Fuck “this.”  Fuck the world. Stimulus. Response. Pain. Repeat. Mimic. Human. Mimic. Fake. Pain. Pain. Pain. This. Pain. Just. Keeps. Coming. Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe…

Just keep breathing until one day…you actually take the first real breath you’ve taken in a long long time.

And you’ll know it.

Because the air around you will thin out.

And you’ll feel the sun.  And music will make you want to sing along.  And you’ll realize you’re actually breathing.  And you’ll smile.

Those days will come, and when they do (and you may not like this part) I need you to take the deepest breath of your new life, because I’m going to need you to get up.  And start moving through your life.

And I need you to pick up your pain, and I need you to take an even deeper breath because I need you to start talking.  Because you’ve got so many stories to tell.

You have to tell us stories about your person.

The world needs to know who they were.

How did you meet?  Tell us about the time they made you so angry you almost left them.  What’d their laugh sound like?  Did they take forever in grocery stores?  

Who. Was. Your. Person?  

I need you to talk about them.  I need you to take the deepest breaths of your life and tell their stories.

I need you to stand up and walk out the door and go out into the world because there is joy waiting to find you.  Real joy.  Real smiles.  New memories that are clamoring to be made and people who need you in them.  You need to tell bad jokes.  You need to make people laugh.  You need to be a part of so many other people’s stories.

There are people who need your voice to be a part of the soundtrack of their life, so once you’re breathing… start talking.  And start feeling.  And start connecting.

But to do that, you have to keep breathing those painful breaths.  And it hurts.  And it isn’t fair.  And, my God, I know some people are so uninteresting, but, my God, others are sure worth meeting.  And you need to meet them.

And I know you don’t feel like “you” anymore, and you don’t feel like you’re bringing much to the world around you, so I need you to hear this one thing above all else:

The good their love did for you cannot be undone by their death.

The world needed them, you needed them, but then they died.  And it isn’t fair.

But, my widowed friend, we still have you, and you are what no one else on this entire planet is:  The only end result the world has of their love.  What did it mean to be truly, deeply, romantically loved by your person?  Only you can tell us.

The world needs love stories.  Stories about epic love.  Tragic love.  Steady love.  Love-you-then-hate-you love.  Love that was almost right.  Love that was always right.  The world needs stories.

So, my newly widowed friend who is sitting on the floor, reading this from a smart phone that has dozens of un-read messages on it that say, “let me know if you need to talk.” Please, when you’re ready, if ever that time comes: get up, take a deep breath, stop mimicking… and start talking.

And above all else, my friend, when you’re ready: struggle, fight, clamor, try…and try…and try…to live.