I am a scholar of grief, I know her
well and I continue to learn from her. Yes there are the Five Stages of Loss and
Grief, brilliantly defined by author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On
Death and Dying, but sometimes, even when you embrace and bravely endure these
five stages, you're never fully out of her grip, there is not an end
point where one can confirm they have completed these stages and are now
grief-free, or they are; it's so very personal. I am soothed by literature and
stories that allow grief to be part of someone's DNA, which is how grief feels
to me. Today I am grateful for Alison Nappi's ideas about grief, she
says:
"The truth is there are losses you never get over. They break
you to pieces and you can never go back to the original shape you once were,
and so you will grieve your own death with that of your beloved lost.
Your grief is your love turned inside
out. That is why it is so deep. That is why it is so consuming. When your
sadness seems bottomless, it is because your love knows no bounds. Grief
teaches us about who we are, and any attempt to crush it, to bury it with the
body is an act of vengeance against your own nature. Instead of pretending we
are okay, take the time to wail, to weep, to scream, to wander the woods day
after day holding hands with sadness, loving it into remission so it doesn’t
turn cold inside of us, gripping us intermittently in the icy fingers of
depression. That’s not what grief is meant to do. Grief has a way of
showing you just how deep your aliveness goes. It’s a dagger shoved down your
throat, its handle bulging like an Adam’s apple protruding from your neck,
edges pressed against both lungs, creating a long, slow bleed in your chest
that rolls down the edges of your life, and you get to handle that any
way you want. If you have been sitting on old grief from your childhood, your
failed relationships, the loss of a family pet, and any other losses you were
unable to fully honor in the past, this left-over grief will also come through
the broken damn. Let it. As John Green says, 'Grief does not change you
... It reveals you.' And herein lies the gift that cannot die. It changes
the course of your life forever. If you allow yourself the chance to feel it
for as long as you need to — even if it is for the rest of your life — you will
be guided by it. You will become someone it would have been impossible for you
to be, and in this way your losses will live on, in you."
(painting by Autumn Ann)
