A strange feeling: that perhaps I want to stay inside this grief a bit longer, so as to let Meg stay with me for one more hour, another week, through next month, during the horrible motion of the holidays. Retreating from the world into the memories, into the joys of our life together have been extraordinarly comforting. I say inside this grief because it can feel like that. Like a down-filled comfortor. Like protective armor.
The conventional wisdom dictates that you should pass through your grief not quickly, not too slowly, but at whatever pace is right for you. So, I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm not quite done feeling sad. And why should I be? The one year anniversary makes a difference, I keep hearing. And it's been only two months. Two months today.
I'm not incapacitated. I'm still in basically a good mood everyday. (But, for those of you know know me, you know that's pretty relative, anyway.) Maybe this bluntness never goes away. Everything I've read says that it does not. People in the same situation (predicament?) say that it does not. And I wonder, is it strange, unhealthy? Is it abnormal to want to hang on a little longer? There is joy in the sadness, if you look for it.
I started to title this post "How Grief Can Feel Like Love." But what I'm trying to say is that grief is love.
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2 comments:
Grief is one way in which love manifests itself. Further, many of us can only experience love through loss.
There is no true grief without love--witness the phenomenon of phantom limb pain. Amputees often continue to feel pain in the limb that is no longer there. We often respond in a similar way to the loss of a loved one. The pain of the loss is one way to hold on to the presence of the one we long to have with us--the phantom limb. Our attachments are severed and we become amputees, but we manage to function pretty well with our other limbs.
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