Knowing grief is knowing love
There’s beauty in madness
When you’ve been introduced to grief from an early age, it never really departs your life. You live in a perpetual state of grief. From a very young age I became accustomed to loss; of people, opportunities and many times myself. There were times that grief consumed me and then there were days where I simply forgot to exist. The problem with having to deal with so much pain is that it becomes a tad bit difficult to harbour any hope. Especially towards love and new life. Your heart becomes so wounded that the possibility of forever becomes tainted in your brain. Almost everyone and every opportunity that comes your way from that point onwards stays on the waiting list for the next exit. The function of grief is to hold space for the love you can no longer give the person or thing that you held space for in your heart and no matter how hard you try to dispose of that love it never leaves, at best it becomes dormant. Your body stores so many feelings that are awakened by the slightest things; the smell of the air, the way the sun feels on your skin, a fragrance and sometimes the loss of memory. The tormenting reminder that you’ve lived longer than the connection and you will never have that time again.
I always say to my friends that I have a terrible case of the walking dead. By that I mean most of the people I grieve are still alive, they’re just dead to me. Now the problem with dealing with mourning living people is that people invalidate your grief. There’s this idea that you can rekindle and be fine or at least you can see them again while their people are permanently gone. There’s no space for the fact that you’ve lost someone or something that your life once made no sense without. That though you could bump into them you can no longer hold them and tell them how much you love them. There’s no space for the ache in your heart when you hear their favourite song or you have their favourite meal. Additionally, the truth is when you lose someone for the first time you’ve lost them forever. No matter how good the repair is, there’ll always be the betrayal or whatever the cause of the breakdown of the connection was. Your heart remembers and you’ll always love them after the fact. I have always maintained that your heart is incapable of loving the same thing the same way twice. Unfortunately I am a devoted lover. When I have decided to love a person, be it platonic or romantic, I do it with my entire being. Love consumes me to a point where there’s no room for anyone in that part of my heart beyond the said person. This leads to my walls collapsing when the person decides they no longer want to be a part of my world. It takes a while for me to even imagine a possible love at the end of the grief.
By the time I lost a loved one to death my heart had already reached its capacity to handle the agony that comes with grief to a point where I went numb for months. This also confirmed my already existing truth that all grief is the same, be it for the permanently dead or the living dead, losing a loved one causes so much unimaginable pain that makes it difficult to live for some time. This is why you’ll find people in hospital because of heartbreak. Any hope you have is erased by the anguishing fear that you will not make it to the other side without the person. The beauty in it all is that God orchestrated the universe in a way that every connection is made with an aftercare connection. An aftercare connection is the one that restores you after suffering such an unimaginable loss. After I lost my grandfather, I met so many loving men in my life that filled my heart with so much love and support. Though they aren’t my grandfather and I constantly want to call him and sob, they’ve held that space so fiercely that there is no lack. We all have those people who we know we wouldn’t have survived the grief and trauma of losing our loved ones had it not been for them and it’s not by mistake. They bring the beauty back in our heart. They tend to our wounds, nourish our souls and hold us with so much warmth and intentionality that for a little while we forget just how horrible life has been. These people teach us to love again without fear and anxiety. They teach us to walk again with a spring in our step and to look at sunsets and remember God. They are love and love heals all wounds. They are our heart’s anchor, their love is so steadfast and unwavering. We owe them our world really.
My words to anyone dealing with new grief would be beyond it never getting better, there’ll always be love. We just need to focus on finding it and feeling it. The key isn’t to escape the hurt or replace the person or opportunity missed. It’s sitting down with our aching bodies, holding onto them fiercely and whispering “there’ll be more love, I have time and I’m alive”. In those moments where you need to cry, do it as uglily and gut wrenchingly as you need to and the weight of your woes fades with those tears. Grief is a never ending experience and rushing it will only cause harm rather than help. However let love be your guide, let it be your home and you’ll find your way to healing. Luckily our loved ones are never truly gone, we carry them with us forever. In our mannerisms, in our features and in our hearts. There are so many things that have become part of our identity because those people once existed in our lives. The same goes for missed opportunities, there are so many skills and people we have in our orbit because we pursued those things. Life is created in a way that there is never lack, however you’ll only ever know abundance when you open your heart to it. That’s all grief is an abundance of love and when you open your heart to pour into other people and yourself it becomes easier to live with that pain no matter how tormenting it can be.
