Grief Is The Price We Pay For Love: Writing About Loss
Words don't flow. I'm stuck when it comes to writing about grief. My latest book, This Silly Bench, circles around the subject, referring to memorial benches and the sensation of wandering, numbness and struggling to grapple with emotions. I've tried to face the spiral, to not be overcome by tears, but even after all these years, it returns in waves, dragging me back in time, like a Taylor Swift song, I am young again, and unable to comprehend, turning it over like a restless pebble. I try again and again, always wondering if my efforts are futile and there is never an end to it, this thing, grief. It is not so intolerable any more, but it still hurts.
I came upon a wonderful writer, Liz Carthy, who used metaphor to describe her pain. It articulates some of what I have gone through, though I often feel like it is not for me to speak about because it wasn't my child that died, it was someone else's and it is as if there is something not quite right for me to talk about the sadness, the loneliness ...
Liz lost her son Ryan. Here is The Whirlpool, which she penned a long time ago, when she was new to the path of grief:
Grieving to me is like being in a whirlpool that comes and goes. One minute you can be in this really quiet and still place; when out of nowhere it hits you. And when it hits you can feel yourself start to spin out of control.
Down! Down! Down! you go helplessly caught up in the momentum of the whirlpool itself. It is during this time you feel like you will never get out and you couldn’t imagine how you are going to possibly survive.
You feel like you can’t grab onto anything because it is all spinning out of control. There is really nothing you can do when this happens except to go with the flow. It is at this time, you do not want to waste your energy fighting nature because it will only prove to frustrate you more. Sooner or later the whirlpool will ebb and you will once again be in the calm of the day.
As I go along on this path of grief, I am realizing that this is going to be a common occurrence. It is something I do not look forward to but I know it is going to happen. I know it is going to happen no matter if I want it to or not. And when this starts to happen again, I just let myself know not to worry. And that I will make it through because this is nothing new to me.
The thing I hate about the whirlpool experience besides the feeling of being out of control is the loneliness of that place and the darkness, and empty feeling that goes with it. That is why I write. I write first, to help myself through that place and secondly, through my writing about it, I hope it will help others feel like they are not alone in their experience.
We who have lost children can never explain to others who have not lost their children to death what this feels like. We do not walk around with signs on our backs or black armbands like years ago. We walk in the world unnoticed by the people walking by. We walk in a world of our very own making.
It is a world no one would choose to walk in, if they had a choice. We live in a different world yet in the same world as everyone else. Somehow we have to bring the two worlds together and go on living in a world that no longer has a place for our children in it. We have to somehow manage to live in a world where children are the hope of the future; and to live with the pain that ours are no longer a part of that world.
Our hopes and dreams no longer can come from our children and we have to find a new place to put our hopes and dreams. We have to find new hopes and dreams through ourselves and through others. We have to now refocus our energies for the positive and not the negative and that my friend is hard to do when you are grieving your child. This is the place that either makes or breaks you as a person; because to focus on the negative, it could destroy us if we let it. We have to learn how to become new creations because we can never be the same person again. And the reason is because a part of us died with our child.
A part of us will never grow and it will always stay the same and hold our child in that special place and we will go to that special place often to hold our child and remember our child and be with them in a place no one can ever come to. Surviving without our children will be a job we will have the rest of our lives. It will be a job with no days off. It will just be continuous movement forward and on some days backward.
Liz is no longer in this same place of grief. She has a book, Whispers from Heaven: A Mother Paints Her Triumphs and Sorrow with Words, which is available in paperback and as an ebook on Amazon.
"When I first started writing my feelings down, I was doing it just for me. I felt like if I didnt get this brutal pain out of me, I was going to just die. Time after time, I tried to express to myself this terrible pain that was consuming my life. Before my son Ryans death, I was always the kind of person who chose to always see the hope in tomorrow.In the very beginning of my grief journey, when I was living and breathing the pain to the point I couldnt even catch my breath, the tomorrows came and I did not even know it. And to tell you the truth I did not want or care to know it. But tomorrow has a funny way of doing that. I hated tomorrows and wanted no part of them. And all I wanted to do was to stay in the pain of losing my child.Well, I am happy to admit I no longer see it that way at all. I love tomorrows now, and I can actually feel the joy tomorrow brings. This feeling did not happen overnight, and it was a long road to get to this place called tomorrow. I do not know if it will happen for you. I do know thisit can happen. And when it does happen, it will be in the way you choose to view it and that, my friend, is for every person to make the choice.After a few years of writing down my feelings, I realized I was actually writing a book of my pain and sorrow over Ryans death. Whenever I went to go buy a book to try to see myself in it, I had a hard time finding the one that said it just right for me. So I wrote the book that I wanted to readthe kind of book that said it without prettying it up with fancy words to make it more palatable for the world to see. I just wanted to write a book I would read. I wanted my book to be real and to express the many different sides of grief. And in doing that I expressed the many different sides, allowing everyone who is grieving a child to find their self-validation no matter where they choose to look."
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| Extract from Whispers from Heaven |
Liz is from New Jersey and is retired, living in Florida. She is also on Facebook.
The UK NHS has a page on grief after bereavement or loss, and free talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are available. You can find further information and support from organisations such as The Good Grief Trust, Cruse, Modern Loss and Death Cafe.
Amazon: USA, UK, DE, CA & AU. Note, Amazon will not price match in some countries, but the book can definitely be downloaded for free on Kobo. I have been trying to resolve the issue with Amazon.When last checked, it was free on Amazon UK and USA.
Kobo: USA, UK, DE, CA, JP & AU.
Or go to your local Amazon or Kobo website and search 'This Silly Bench E.M. Blake.'
You can also buy it in paperback from Amazon: USA, UK, DE, CA, JP & AU
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