About grief

It was inevitable that I wrote about grief this month. Inevitable but unwelcome in so many ways. It feels maudlin. Self-indulgent. But, this week, it came up so suddenly and unexpectedly that it has left another mark and made me realize how grief is never singular or isolated. There is always more to our grief than what has triggered it. Because we are complex and we feel things deeply. Because we love.

It was inevitable that I wrote about grief this month because November contains both my dad’s birth and death days. Bookends to the month. His birthday at the beginning; his death at the end. It covers my November with a sheen of sorrow that I will never really shake.

He would have been ninety this week. He would love that I’m writing. He would not love what is happening with my mom, but he wouldn’t know how to care for her. He would be as frustrated as I am with the hypocrisy of the people who in one breath say they support first responders and in the next resoundingly reject the investment that is required to actually support them.* He would have many things to say about our country, our politics, and our economy. I wish I could talk with him about Palestine and Israel, not because he knew or understood the complexity, but because that is what he and I would have talked about and I miss those conversations. I miss him. Even with all my complicated feelings about my dad (and there are many), I miss him and I grieve his passing.

So, it was inevitable that grief was to be a topic this month, but the grief I feel for my dad is the type of grief that we stop talking about. It’s the grief that is there, but that is largely hidden from the world. Only you (and maybe your immediate circle) remember your loss and your grief. After the initial shock of grief has passed, after the sympathy flowers have wilted and all the messages have been received and the “official” grieving period** is over, the people in your life move on because you have moved on, haven’t you? We can’t grieve forever. That’s not healthy.

Except, we do grieve forever. I will always miss and grieve for my dad. Just like I grieve for other people and things no longer in my life.

This week, my hidden grief was overshadowed by a new grief, one that I will feel deeply for a long time. My mom’s young, energetic, lively, lovely cat, Dollie, found a stray pill of ibuprofen on the floor. Not knowing that had happened, it was a few days before we realized she was in critical condition. By then, it was too late to repair the damage to her kidneys, and we made the difficult, but necessary, decision to euthanize her. I held her in my arms as she left this life, and it has devastated me in ways I didn’t expect and brought back grief and experiences I barely acknowledge.

And my mom. Oh, my mom. Dollie was her light, her joy. I am grieving my mom’s loss more than I can explain. It is a cruel and brutal blow to her amid all her current struggles. Losing a beloved pet is never easy but to lose one so young and so alive...my body aches for her and this loss.

And yet, I am grateful for this grief. It means there was and is love.

We don’t grieve the things and people and animals and living beings that we didn’t love.

Grief only exists because of love.

And we love in so many different ways and in so many different directions.

This is why we always carry grief with us too, even if we don’t acknowledge it. Grief over the loss of a loved one, yes, of course. But also grief over our changed relationships, our broken keepsakes, and our damaged environment. Grief over missed opportunities and grief over perceived and imagined failures. The grief of monumental loss and the petty. Grief for what is happening thousands of miles away to people you have never met. Grief over the hole in your favorite piece of clothing that always made you feel special. Grief over the people down the road who can’t afford to stay here but have nowhere else to go. Grief of things that have yet to pass.

Grief because of so many things, big and seemingly small, because that is how we know we love.

We can’t have one without the other.

It is inevitable.

*Voters in the city and surrounding rural community of Belgrade, Montana just rejected a mill levy that would have gone to first responder paramedics pay.

**When, exactly, is the official grieving period over in our culture?