Trapped In The Margins

I don’t think that I’m eloquent enough to capture all of the emotions that occur when someone you know dies. I’ve tried for the past seventeen years to understand my own grief and begin to understand the way in which grief impacts others. Needless to say, I have failed on both counts. Something that I have learned is that grief has layers and it takes different forms. The five stages of grief are a helpful guideline but it doesn’t truly capture the way that grief irrevocably changes you.

I say that my understanding of grief began seventeen years ago but it really began twenty nine years ago. Yes, my first experience of grief occurred in the late 1900s. I am truly old. I was only four years old when this happened. My parents were in the kitchen. My father got off the phone with family. He had received unthinkable news – his older brother died. I remember my father sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table crying. I may have said “don’t cry daddy” or something to that effect. I do remember putting my small hand to his face. That was my introduction to the world of grief and how it profoundly changes you.

There have been many deaths in the years following that one. Actually, I’ve experienced too many deaths to count. It sounds macabre but I used to work at funerals as a child and then I worked in a retirement home in my twenties. Death became a routine part of life. My problem was that I carried all of these deaths with me. Each death adding another scar on my heart. I bled for those families who mourned their loved ones. I mourned for the people that I lost as well. I was stuck in a perpetual state of mourning. I truly forgot to live.

It wasn’t until my late twenties that my relationship with grief would begin to change. I met a man – the man who would change my life forever. Forever is a funny word, isn’t it? This man had never experienced grief. He never experienced the death of someone that he cared about in any way, shape, or form. I was astounded to find someone not scarred by grief or tragedy. This man walked through life with a childlike innocence – an innocence which I never truly experienced. I wanted to know him. I wanted to see if I could capture his outlook on life. I wanted to superimpose his worldview onto my soul so that I could live in peace without heartache.

I failed.

Actually, I ended up sharing my grief with him because I almost died. This isn’t hyperbole. I really almost died. My life could have ended and I would have been the grief that man had to carry with him until he met his own fate. He experienced grief for that moment and it changed him. It changed the both of us.

My grief is now like an old friend that I have lunch with on a random Sunday afternoon. It’s an old and familiar experience. The afternoon is quiet yet an anxious energy fills the air. Monday is on the horizon. We sit quietly with each other basking in the moment, reminiscing about the person of the day. We recall the good, the bad, and the funny moments. Anything that comes to mind really. We sit and recall everything from the sound of the person’s voice, a favorite movie, their laugh, or a loving nickname. A familiar smell fills the air. It’s like the smell of the ground after the rain or opening a window after it snows. The familiar air occupies the space for a loving moment and then it’s gone. And like that, the afternoon with grief draws to a close until another fateful Sunday afternoon.