How Do I Make Grief Feel Less Crushing?
Find a community and a meeting place around what you've lost. The Advice Column.
Welcome back to Come Home: The Advice Column, where you have the answers.
This week’s submission:
I’m seeking help dealing with grief. I know a lot of people have to deal with it since the pandemic, but my dad died when I was 12. Grief is definitely not linear and it didn’t really effect me mentally/emotionally until I was probably 19. I’m 22 now and all these years later it still feels fresh and crushing.
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion says:
“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
I’m certain there is no exact answer, but I have a few insights. This week in therapy, I sobbed for an entire hour about losses I thought I’d chalked up to the game of life, and begged my therapist to help me “move on.” Literal deaths from 10+ years ago, relationship deaths from months ago, and ego deaths from yesterday - they’re all rushing back to me because I’ve found stability, safety, and peace. Grief, however, is relentless and tenacious and will find us in quiet, and quiet alone. You may feel the same, like it’s catching up to you because your mind and body spent years shielding you from the immediate pain so you could survive. Maybe you feel like you should be over it, or that everyone else is over it and can’t meet you in your mourning. That’s what makes grief feel so damn lonely, and it’s not true.
To my petition to “move on,” my therapist replied simply, “We don’t do that here. We move through.”
You’re right; grief is not linear. It’s also, as you know, not a destination to be met, an itch to scratch, or a fly to swat. And even though they’ve created a step-by-step process to bereavement and a prescribed return “back to normal” after losing someone you never imagined a life beyond for even a second in case you jinx yourself — there is no normal to which you make a return. Much like our present expectations to “return” to a world which no longer exists post-COVID, there is emptiness in the wake of such devastation. How do we fill such openness without disrespecting who and what formerly filled the space?
Grief is not something we know until it becomes us. People don’t want to catch the contagion of grief so they shy away from it entirely. I’m not shy about talking about grief even though it makes people uncomfortable, and you can grant yourself space to not be either. I lost many family members in a short period of time, both to death and other versions of tragedy, but we have to be honest about pain and ask people to use their imaginations in order to find compassion. Because at some point, we will all find ourselves in the position - bent at the waist, head in hands, and wondering if there is room for life again.
We start this life in grief. Babies are born kicking and screaming, terrified of breath and light, and being forced to leave the warmth and safety of a womb. We spend the next several decades preparing for when other people will be grieving us, and ignoring the many moments of grief which present themselves in between. The conditions from which we find ourselves in grief vary in degree of impact and devastation - jobs, moving, mental illness, infertility and pregnancy, loss of relationships, faith, innocence and hope, health, and a form of loss that ensues all other loss - loss of our identities in those conditions. Grief shapes us and our ability to connect with others in humility. These moments of loss are not just moments. They define us.
My first and only true prescription in feeling a little less shitty about navigating something we all dread happening to us - even though there is a 100% chance the people we love most will die - is to find community. There are books, podcasts, Facebook groups, bereavement meetings - my friend Anna hosts a little meet up on Clubhouse called Dead Parents Club. Anybody who has ever lost someone who they loved dearly knows - everyone who is not presently processing grief says the wrong thing because they have no idea what to say. It is hard to find true empathy for something you wish to never, ever feel so most will leave grieving folks with platitudes to imply that we will “move on.”
You can and will feel better, but you won’t move on from your father. His loss is not a raging river to build a bridge over so you don’t get swept up in it. Find folks who speak the language, who won’t shove you out of mourning, who will let you be angry and confused and lost and in yearning for him as long as you need. You don’t need people who will give you advice. You need people who will listen, and who you can listen to and hear “I’m not alone and what grief looks like for me is completely okay.”
Grief is not a one size-fits-all and you don’t have to be anywhere but where you are in your journey to finding what life means without your dad. It may be helpful to validate all of the fears in grief. The fear that you may feel like this forever. The fear that you won’t know who you are outside of it. We all lose ourselves when we lose someone essential to our being, and you lost you when you were still discovering who that was. I’m sure you still are, and the loss of innocence, hope, and identity in facing mortality with the loss of someone who we all think is immortal at 12 years old is earth shattering. Parts of you were blasted all over your little universe and you are still picking up those pieces to bring back to a safe space and mend. 10 years seems right on track to me, and even if it weren’t - who cares. We don’t move on from grief. We move forward with it.
Holding on to the gut-wrenching sadness of losing someone can make us feel like holding on to that person. Release yourself from the guilt of generally feeling better, finding purpose, and living life without your father. Let the loss of his life and the continuation of yours exist in the same space. You have a lot of life to live, many moments when you will wish he were there to witness you, be proud of you, give you a hug, hold your hand, send a wink of reassurance, and because you can be honest about the fact that you wish he were there, he will be. Not in the much better way he was when he was alive, or in the way religious folks mean “they’re still with you.” In your grief, he will be there.
Grief doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You don’t have to find some false sense of collateral beauty, but you are finding new ways to bring the essence of your father’s life along with you without the heartbreak of knowing he will not be here physically gripping your chest. It will take as much time as you need, but first you have to grant yourself permission. In an exercise, find your father as much as you can in familiar meeting places. You can find him in rituals - eating his favorite meal, doing exactly what you did on that day you can’t get out of your mind because it was the epitome of your sacred bond - when he was most him and you didn’t have an aching heart. Meet him there.
I don’t know how you feel, but I know grief in my own way. When I was 12, I also lost a caregiver. Her name is Rosie. My father was never in my life, so my grandmother replaced him. I called her to talk about school, to tell on my mom when she was stressed and lashing out as moms do, to chat through our favorite show The Golden Girls. I came home from school one day to find out she had passed in the night alone, and my world seemed to shrink in a single instant.
A year later, I returned to her grave and got baptized at her church to feel close to her. When I got my first big check in adulthood, I bought a gold, rose necklace to be in her embrace always. She has a picture on my nightstand - wearing a bonnet and nightgown and sitting on the edge of her bed - and every night I tell her to have the sweetest dreams. She used to tell me a woman never leaves home without her earrings, so I put my earrings on each day. When I’m feeling down, I’ll sneak to the closest McDonalds and get a vanilla ice cream cone, just like we used to on the humid summer nights when my brother and I were visiting and she wanted to some time for just the two of us. Sometimes I type her old address in on Google Maps and zoom in to the front of her house and picture her sitting at the table, looking out on the street waiting for my arrival. There are very few things that feel like love that don’t remind me of her and since her death, love has been accompanied by the aching of her absence. But in these rituals, I meet her again over and over and over. To love her is to grieve her. My practice in honoring her keeps her here in ways that aren’t devastating or heavy or unfortunate, they’re just her. If letting go of grief means letting go of our meeting places, I don’t desire it.
You’ve been affected by something chronic, and so very young. Not all wounds are meant to completely close, in my opinion, and I hope that’s not a complete disappointment to hear. You are multitasking your grief with laughs and love, and that is truly a miracle. There are some things we will lose in this life which are invaluable. Parents can be one of them. Your father was certainly one of them. Your grief is a testament to what he meant to you. It should not hold you back from making memories because he’s not here, but guide you through a life of humility, compassion, and connection. Our grief is our continued love for the essence of what we’ve lost.
I’m cradling you in my heart today.
I want to offer you some concrete resources that I’ve read/listened to/loved here:
No Happy Endings by Nora McInerny
A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Griefcast, a podcast by Cariad Lloyd
Ending Considerations:
Do you have peers (not parents or people who also lost your dad) to talk about grief with?
Where can you meet your dad on this side?
What does feeling better look like for you? What does allowing joy and grief to exist in the same space mean for you?
What makes you feel like you’re wrong for still grieving?
oh my i submitted this question and can’t believe you actually answered it THANK YOUU SO MUCH often i feel i’m not being “strong” bc it’s been so long n i’m still struggling but everything u said is so true esp how it is a testament to how much i love him. also it’s hard to talk w friends about bc i can’t help but get emotional still n will avoid bringing it up to keep from crying. i’ve been trying to sprinkle in happy memories casually in convo to get more comfortable even mentioning him. I cannot thank you enough for all your kind words.