The Pinball Machine of Grief.

Grief and loss are far from linear. Being blindsided by grief.

My son, hiding from his sadness at the loss of his beloved Grandma. Photo by me.

Our evening seemed to be heading along normally, my son and I were eating dinner and chatting about my husband’s big birthday coming up. I mentioned in passing that my son’s Grandad would be bringing his companion along to our little family birthday lunch.

My son lost it.

Cutlery slammed down, he stormed off. A tirade of swearing came back interspersed with some form of explanation for the outburst. Anger was directed at my father-in-law’s companion. “She’s taking Poppa away from me” was spat at me.

“She’s not part of the family, Poppa always spends f***ing time with her, I never get to see him”.

I park the dropping of the ‘f-bomb’ for a potential future, calmer conversation.

“I never got to spend any time with Grandma before she died”.

And there it was. That one line. Silence.

For a moment we were completely alone in our grief, unable to think, move or speak. All we could manage was to stare at one another, shoulders sagging under the weight of a sadness so heavy it pulled us deep within ourselves. Our eyes dark and lost within our thoughts. We were connected only by grief.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks. It was enough to break the darkness.

My son, unable to cope with the emotional overload crawled into a corner and hid under a blanket. Hiding from his grief.

I simply sat and sobbed. Begging in my head for mum to be back with us. Cemented to the chair by my own deep sadness.

After what felt like hours, I went to check on my hiding boy. My gentle touch was met with a fierce thrashing blow.

Anger again. The desperate angry “whys” came thick and fast. I tried to give answers to questions I didn’t really have answers for. I was as lost as he was.

Eventually I admitted defeat. All I could say was “I don’t know”.

“I don’t know why she didn’t look after herself” “I don’t know why she got sick” “I don’t know why she had to die now”

I collapsed in an exhausted heap. The blanket is wrapped around me. My dear boy looking after me. “I miss Grandma”, he says through soft tears. “I miss her too”, I reply hugging him to me. A connection we will always share, one unique to us.

Grief and loss are strange and uncomfortable bedfellows. They often sit in the ‘too hard basket’ for open discussion. My mum died in late February this year yet days like this it feels like she died yesterday. The grief is so raw. But this isn’t how you are expected to deal with grief.

After the flower bouquets whither so do the enquiries as to how you’re coping. There is almost an expectation that you should be ok after a couple of weeks. Anything beyond that and you’re making excuses for not getting on with life. Yet grief and loss are not linear as many schools of thought would have you believe.

After my mum passed, I did a lot of reading hoping I could see an end to the way I was feeling — trying to put a timeline or understanding of where I was at in my ‘grief journey’. I came across two well-known schools of thought:

An often referenced one is Kübler-Ross’ “The Five Stages of Grief:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

The other one is from psychologists Colin Murray-Parkes and John Bowlby who suggest there are only four stages:

1. Shock and numbness

2. Yearning and searching

3. Disorganisation and despair

4. Reorganisation and recovery

And yes, I probably have been through all of these. In reality, you bounce around them in different order and various levels of urgency. Grief, deep gut-wrenching grief, is far from linear. It does not happen in a nice orderly way where in the end you feel ok with the deep loss you have experienced.

The reality (for me anyway and maybe some of you), is that you feel like a ball in a pinball machine. You get flung around various emotions from sadness, anger, comfort, love, to anything in between. Just as you think you’re ok and you you hit the top of the machine, before you know it, you’re spat out at the bottom only to start the emotional battering again.

When you lose someone, the Pinball Grief game is topped up with never ending credit. As time goes by, the games just aren’t played as often. But when it is time to be the ball in the Pinball Grief Machine — take a deep breath and ride it out like a boss.

It may blindside you. But it won’t kill you.