What is true about grief

Day 2 — #writeingrief

What you may not know about grief — if you’ve never grieved for someone very close to you— is that there are many things nobody talks about surrounding the process and the aftermath of death. People fear these conversations as if speaking about dying will conjure up evil spirits that will rip all of our souls apart. And that isn’t a pleasant way to live. Death talk? To be avoided at all costs.

But here is some truth:

Grief is alienating. If we dare speak about it for too long after a death has occurred, people look away, shift uncomfortably in their seats, change the subject with a forced smile.

Grief is physical. We scrape at our skin from the inside out, choke down sobs, roll our eyes hard into the backs of our heads to escape, hold our breath until we want to vomit.

Grief is angry. We curse. We curse God. We are filled with a seething emotion that feels like hate, but its just the angry side of grief

Grief is loud and silent. We whisper our grief and fill up dark places with it. We scream at ourselves and others with bloodcurdling intensity, even when no sound comes out.

Grief is heavy. Walking becomes a struggle. The sheer, enormous, cruel weight of grief drags us into the dirt, down to our knees. Our shoulders crumple forward, our heads bow low. We cannot lift our hearts up. Our arms tremble.

Grief is jagged. There are no smooth or linear lines to grief, no way to go from here to there on its edges. No beginning and no end. It is broken glass under the soles of our feet and in the pockets of our heart. It is sharp, dull, numb, then sharp again, at random, wicked intervals.

What else?