“If we try to see our entire lives in one broad sweep, what becomes obvious is that in every stage of a normal existence, just when we begin to feel expert and comfortable, that is exactly when the nature of life’s restless heart forces us to move completely out of that previously comfortable era into one in which we are hopelessly inexpert.”
(The Smell of Rain on Dust, Martin Prechtel)
Grief is for the living. The air around you shatters when it starts.
I always thought I wouldn’t know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn’t. But in truth, our dad was gone after the biopsy in August 2021. These last two and a half years were our time to learn how to live here without him.
When grief first hits, it hits hard, and you’re alone. Even surrounded by people, like today, you’re all alone in figuring out how to navigate and respond to the devastating news of a loved one being gone. Then, as you move through grief, it becomes part of your new being. It becomes a personality aspect that imprints itself as a scarlet letter to be worn, not for others to pity but for those entering their own grief to know they aren’t alone. You are not alone here.
The go to response for many of us is to offer words of comfort…Because grief and death are difficult and uncomfortable. But for today, I invite you instead to sit in this together. Let’s be uncomfortable together. Let’s be in pain together, because this pain is worth it – it’s a testament to him.
Eventually, we will all find hope again. A hope that someday, after the shock of grief is worn down from shear friction of time, some kernel of comfort will start to shine through the darkness. A memory will surface that reminds us that pain and loss like this is only felt so deeply because its opposite emotion has been experienced as well. A memory that offers a laugh when it used to offer only a tear. A memory that bubbles to the surface after being held as too precious in the fortress of our mind that we didn’t want to pull it down into the dungeons of depressed despair we’ve been sitting in…
Three bits of advice to get to that hopeful moment that I’ve learned from my father in my short 12,234 days with him:
- Always play music.
- Tell good stories. Tell them again and again.
- Be accessible to the people you love. And to the people who love you.
I’ve watched dad die for the last two and a half years. During this time, suddenly and unexpectedly, my brother-in-law, Mike, died too. I can’t tell you what’s harder, slow death, or quick – both turn your world upside down. But I can tell you that this overwhelming pain of grief…it’ll lessen. We will learn to grow larger around it: through words of meditation, through new understandings of sitting with one another in discomfort and pain. Our being though now is forever altered – it is always this pain, this grief. Because grief, is for the living.
Alexandra Chamberlain 