I Met My Grief

Welp. I did it. I met my grief during a meditation. I feel like I’ve pushed it down or maybe put it in a jar and placed it on a high shelf and hid the ladder I used from myself. I haven’t taken it out in a while to get a real good look at it. To try to figure out what it wanted, or what I wanted to do with it. I just wish it would go away or resolve itself in a nice story book ending way with a nice sunset on a beach. But my life isn’t a book and I hate the beach.

In this meditation, I was asked to picture my head and my heart space and to make it bigger. For my head I pictured a room covered in off-white sheets, dust, and cobwebs.  I started clawing at the things boxing me in and found myself in my childhood home which morphed into a large sunlit room. In my heart I found myself traveling and ending up overlooking water on a high cliff. I knew I was in Ireland without really knowing if it was a real place. Behind me were my Gram, my mom, and my dad.

She asked to then allow the grief in. My large sunlit room turned into a dark attic with the door creaking open. It didn’t ask permission. I didn’t open the door. Where did the sun go? Because that’s what my grief has been. For the past 13 plus years my grief has slunk it’s way in without me inviting it in. Because I didn’t want to invite it in or give it space. I didn’t think my dark grief could exist in the warm sun. Maybe right now it can’t. I can’t have both hold space in my head. My heart was still wide open though. But now she wanted me to meet my grief and to look at it.

I was no longer in the dark attic. I was standing on the porch of a rental we had in Misquamicut Beach one summer. The sky was overcast, I don’t think the sun had risen yet. The water was grey and harsh against the shore. I leaned against the railing and looked to my right and there it was. It was a living breathing thing. It was almost like thick smoke, but something heavier. It was black and swirling around, with flashes of red, and every so often a brilliant golden light would shine out from the center. It wouldn’t stop moving. It looked like lightning lived in there and everything wanted to explode.

She asked to listen to it. I heard something like static and almost like a mini thunderstorm. She asked me to pay attention to it. It’s fucking angry. It’s so angry. It’s so heavy and weighed down by anger I can’t believe it appeared floating to me. She asked for it to pay attention and listen to me, and it heard the anger right back. It’s easy to just say your sad when it comes to grief. It’s easy to say, “let me just pull the covers over my head today and try again tomorrow.” What isn’t easy is coming to terms with how angry you are. Angry at the situation. Angry at the events that got you here. Angry how you’re handling it, or not handling it. Angry that you have to pretend every day. Angry you have to wear a mask no matter who you are around. Angry that the word grief is taboo, and you’re not actually supposed to talk about it. Angry that you were expected to just pick up the next week and get through your life like the most traumatic thing didn’t happen to you. Angry at them for leaving you.

I was then asked to absorb that grief back into the dark place within me. I reached out my hand and watched it make contact. I watched that black, red, golden, swirling source of anger travel up my hand and through my arm into my chest. It was warm and it felt like it was home. They talk about the sad part and the crying. They don’t really tell you about how the anger chews you up and spits you out a different person. They don’t tell you that you’ll feel jealous of other people having what you don’t anymore. They don’t tell you that you’ll feel like the world’s biggest asshole for that one. They don’t tell you how you’re almost one inch away from burning bridges when you feel overwhelmed at the drop of a hat. They don’t tell you sometimes you want to watch the world burn so your anger isn’t the hottest thing on the planet. Sure, they tell you it’s a stage of grief. They don’t tell you that’s the default setting now and it’s not a stage.

Grief is love with nowhere to go. It’s also anger with someone who isn’t here anymore for you to yell at. So even though I have called my parents assholes for leaving me while I am driving alone in my car or telling them if they don’t like something they can come back and haunt me, it’s just empty anger that no matter how much I feed it it will never be satisfied. I know if I didn’t love them this much I wouldn’t be this angry, so I guess in a way I’m okay with that.