Original photo by Alex Green
There’s a depth to grief that’s often difficult to articulate. So many metaphors have to work together to even attempt to encompass it. Even that last sentence uses a metaphor to express grief’s enormity. Yet, we must try; grief needs to be voiced. It needs expression. It needs to be grappled with.
The Many Faces of Grief
Grief decenters us. That is, it leaves us feeling unbalanced, off in some way, like we’re somehow on the fringes of our own lives, our own selves. Our very being suddenly seems more distant, which can leave us feeling untethered. In other words:
Grief disconnects us. It leaves us feeling detached from whatever it was that kept us centered, focused. We could say it leaves us feeling ungrounded, like we’re drifting instead of standing. Instead of moving through life, it’s almost as though life is moving around us. Our steps lack agency or intention; we may find ourselves going here or there without any emotional investment, as though we’re only observers of our own lives.
Grief is heavy, like a weight that lives in our muscles instead of on them, as if moving, itself, is the greatest chore. It seeps into our bones. Our bodies become the very things that resist and hinder us, and because it’s impossible to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps, it becomes impossible to move under the weight of our own grief.
Grief is a sinking feeling, like a slow descent into quick sand. Rather, it’s the looming inevitability of the descent, the resolution of death — a continuous dread without relief.
Grief is a black hole within us that threatens to swallow us up. It steals away the light. It urges us to implode. Its force is inescapably strong. It even, at times, seems to reach out and pull at those around us.
Grief is a cloudiness, a fog of the mind. It’s like we can’t see our lives clearly, like a continual confusion about what is. Thoughts are hard or convoluted, like we’re vacant inside.
Grief is like being trapped in molasses. Life becomes sluggish. Thoughts become sluggish. Feelings become sluggish. It’s like being in something thick, like life itself is thick.
Grief is communal. It’s a burden too big to be contained in one life. It ripples and permeates families, communities, social networks, and workplaces. Even the attempt to contain it causes waves that move the world around us.
Grief is silent, and grief screams. It leaves us without words, yet it can be so loud that it deafens us to everything else.
Grief is entitled and jealous. It demands our attention. It enters uninvited. It calls when it wants and disappears when it wants, regardless of the hour, and it often shuts down our ability to feel anything else.
The list goes on. The challenge of articulating the many faces of grief is continual. All of language can touch grief, because grief is an utterly permeating experience.
Yet, Hope in Hopelessness
Grief is persistent. It insists upon itself, which may seem nefarious. In American cultures, at least, we learn that grief is an unwelcomed guest whose presence is only ever uncomfortable and undesirable; it must be “fixed” or ignored or overcome. Yet, grief isn’t, at its core, nefarious.
The persistence of grief isn’t found in malice but in love. Grief is born when an object of our love becomes, or seems to have become, unreachable; grief is unsatisfied love, love without completion, and the persistence of grief is proportional to the depth and breadth of that love. The larger, the more powerful, the deeper, the wider, the more significant that love, the more it persists in grief.
Even when we grieve realities and systems and environments, this seems true. The grief of realities is born from some understanding that what is isn’t what should be, that somewhere, our love is failing to reach others and the love of others is failing to reach us — that there’s a hole in society where love should be.
Even when we grieve in our shame, this seems true. The grief of shame is a grief of dissonance, because we believe ourselves unworthy of love, yet we know the deep, unending desire to be loved. It is the very lack of self-love, combined with the innate understanding that love is essential to our being, that creates such overwhelming grief.
Yet, again, grief is evidence of love. It’s evidence that we love, that we care. Fundamentalist Christianity would have us equate love only with happiness and levity, but love is vulnerability. The deeper the love, the more vulnerable the bearer. The deeper the love, the deeper the joy, yes, but also, the deeper the grief.
To use yet another analogy: the depth of Jesus’s love is made evident in both his vulnerability and his grief, which culminate in his crucifixion. It’s in his ministry to the poor, sick, and outcast. It’s in his anger toward religious leaders. It’s in his outpouring in the garden and his lament of Jerusalem. It’s in his prayers for his disciples. It’s in his silence before his accusers and before Pilate. It’s in his dying words.
This is why violence often fails to alleviate grief, because the violence of hatred is antithetical to love. Denying grief its place is also a denial of love. Conversely, attending to grief means attending to our love and vulnerability.
Grief is a companion on a journey that only begins when an object of our love seems out of reach. Grief is a place where love waits to be redirected or reclaimed. Grief is a reminder to attend to love — a reminder to take it up when we’re tempted to leave it by the wayside. Grief is a reminder to place our love on the mantle and remember its power, whether it’s love for ourselves, our families, our communities, our societies, or humanity, as a whole.
Today, I grieve, and today, I love.
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