I chose life

Grief is a complicated emotion that is hard to understand no matter how old you are. It creeps up on you slowly at first and then suddenly it’s just there, in an overwhelming wave of emotion, it swallows you.

 Grief, I think, is the next strongest emotion in comparison to love. Love is a very strong emotion, when you feel it it can be overpowering. Anyone can feel grief, be they young or old, anyone can feel it. When we first fall into the deep and dark depths of grief, we look for a way out. This feeling of deep sorrow and sometimes anger and most times loss, it is foreign to us and frightening. At first we desperately claw at the depressing walls of grief’s pit, trying to find that one grip of a reality and norm that does not include  grief. But, as time goes on, we find it is easier to wallow in grief and lay in its dark shadows, than it is to look for a way out. The longer we stay in those shadows, the more time depressions cold fingers have to pull us further and further away from what little bit of hope was left in our lives and further and further away from those who love us. But what is grief exactly, and how does it happen to find us?

Grief, by definition, is a feeling of deep sorrow provoked by a sudden loss. We most often feel grief when a loved one dies. Whether that loved one is an animal or a person does not matter, so long as it is one whom you loved very dearly. When that loved one is taken away from us, we experience grief. We experience anger as well. Anger that that person would leave us when they did, as if they’d had a choice in their date of departure. Anger that we get to continue living without them by our side, while their cold and life-less bodies lie in holes in the ground, holes marked by a cold stone with their name carved into it. We feel anger and then slowly we begin to feel grief.

A deep, deep sorrow that falls upon us like a blanket. At first it seems to almost comfort us, whispering distant but fond memories of times you and that loved one had shared. When you begin to feel safe with this emotion known as grief, it begins to send reminders, reminders that those memories are all you’ll ever have of that loved one, and even those too will fade away. Grief whispers to you about how you’ll never see them again, how they’re gone forever. 

Watching someone experience grief can be a very hard thing to do. You wish to comfort them but you just don’t seem to know how. Everything you say seems wrong and seems to remind them of why they’re grieving in the first place. When you don’t say anything at all they sometimes feel as though you don’t care. So what do you do then? Sometimes just making yourself known….just placing your hand on their shoulder or giving them a hug is all it takes to help them take that first step to leaving the shadows of grief.

When my Great-Grandfather passed away I experienced anger first and then grief. Anger that my Grandfather did not take care of himself like he should have, feeling as though his death was his fault. I felt he was being selfish, letting himself die like that, not considering for a minute how anybody else would feel. What right did he have to make that decision? The anger dissolved into grief as the realization that he was not coming back and that I would not wake up to see him every morning hit me. Who would I watch Gunsmoke and Bonanza and John Wayne movies while eating peanut brittle with? For the first time I would miss those potato pancakes floating in syrup that I used to dread eating. I would miss his constant cursing and how he would turn the TV volume up to 100, insisting he couldn’t hear it if it was any lower. I’d miss being amused by how he would fall asleep during church every Sunday. Miss how terrified of snakes he was and how he would react whenever he saw one. I would miss him in general. We sang “I’ll fly away” and “On Eagle’s wings” at his funeral. Every time either one of those songs was sung in church or played on the radio tears would well up in my eyes and I wouldn’t be able to finish singing the song. I still can’t sing them today. I became quiet and withdrawn after he died. I slept a lot and didn’t want to do much. My Grandfather loved the song “Amazing Grace” and I do to. I used to love singing it in church and I used to enjoy singing in general, but now I hardly sing at all.

When my Great-Grandmother's husband died, it shook her to the core. He died and she felt abandoned and betrayed by him. How dare he just up and leave her all alone, to continue living without him by her side. It angered her beyond belief that he was gone, as if he didn't have a right to die. Her anger slowly melted into grief which then melted into depression. She stopped eating regularly, going down to just one can of soup a day. My Great-Grandmother would sit in the window, looking outside all day long, longing for the day she too would die so she could be reunited with her husband. 

I never met my Great-Grandmother, she died long before I was born. She died depressed and bitter at her loss. When faced with the choice of choosing to succumb to grief's grip or fighting it off and choosing to live again, she chose grief. 

 Grief is an overwhelming feeling that’s not understood by even the oldest and wisest of us. It’s something that we all go through and experience at some point in our lives, like it or not. It is up to us to overcome grief and not fall prey to its trap. Just because a loved one died doesn’t mean you have to die too. Don’t step out on life just because they did. Keep living. Grieve and then let yourself heal. Choose to keep living if not for yourself than at least for the one you loved.

When my Grandfather died a part of me died with him and I did not see a point to continue on with life. No, I was not suicidal, I just wasn't thrilled with life. Death became frightening to me, having seen my Grandfather, who was terrified of dying, die. It left me shaken, not wanting to die myself. Seeing everything he went through as he died and finally seeing him dead was a very scary thing to me. Even worse was seeing him in the casket. He looked so different......so....so hollow and not there. There lay my Grandfather right in front of me, and yet he wasn't really there. Seeing him hollow like that left me hollow. I didn't want to choose life, but I did. I chose life, so can you.