Grief didn’t come with instructions. It was a crash course. And I, the unwilling pupil, was failing miserably. I vaguely remember learning the stages of grief in Psychology 101. I was utterly unprepared that they came and went multiple times a day, sometimes even an hour. They wreaked havoc on my mind and body.
Before my son’s death, I thought you went through each step one by one, one nice neat step at a time, and then voilà—it was over. But I knew nothing. Grief is not linear and does not play out on a neat timeline. Instead, it resembles a massive tangled web.
The days, weeks, months, and initial years following Joseph’s death were horrific. I grieved him as deeply as I loved him. I crawled into his bed, read his words, and listened to his music. I grabbed his dirty shirts from the pile of laundry on his bedroom floor and inhaled them long and hard, hoping to lock the scent that was uniquely his into my nose, brain, and lungs. I spent hours in his room, surrounded by his books, baseball cards, and school notebooks. I did everything I possibly could to stay connected to my firstborn. Adjusting to his absence seemed to take forever and convinced me I was losing my mind.
Navigating the basics of each day rendered me empty, exhausted, and of little use. I felt like I was thinking through Jell-O, and my body was stuck, moving in slow motion through quicksand.
I gazed at his photos on my dresser and remembered each moment. Memories that once evoked tears of joy triggered tears again—only this time, tears of pain. I didn’t want to look at him in pictures. I wanted to look at him in life. Photographs were constant reminders of things that would never happen between us again.
I now know there is no one-size-fits-all technique to move through the process. We each grieve differently. The important thing is that we recognize that our grief will manifest differently at different times and give ourselves plenty of time, space, and permission to let it happen. It’s hard, ugly, and necessary.
Press on, friend. You can do this.