The Truth About Grief
“I agree with you, about what you said about adapting to survive the pain. I heard something once about grief, an analogy of it being like an ocean. Some days it washes over you again and again and you feel like you’re drowning in the waves. Other days the tide is out and you are still at the beach but you’re distracted by other things and you get to enjoy the beautiful panorama. The grief is ever-present and ever-evolving.”
-a text from my friend Brielle combined with a part of a quote from Vicki Harrison
After my brother died, I wrote a short letter to myself in my favorite brain-storming notebook. It said, “If you don’t do anything else in your life, you make sure you publish a book. You make sure you publish something. For Andre. You don’t ever finish anything in your goddamned life but you better finish this. He deserves that much.”
Almost a year later, and I still haven’t finished the book, but I did start a blog so it’s going somewhere. He inspired me, whether he knows it or not, to go after what I want.
To be honest, I wanted to avoid writing about this topic. I still don’t know how to handle it, and I’m not always ready to be transparent about pain (#LeoProblems). But then I read an article that talked about the most common mistakes writers make when they first embark on their journey, and one of those mistakes is, “Not sharing anything real about yourself. You want people to read your work, but you don’t want them to know who you are? It’s not going to happen.”
So I started to think about one of the most traumatic experiences I ever had in my life, and that was when my brother died. He died unexpectedly; he had a heart attack in his sleep. He spent the entire day before he died with my mom. They made breakfast together, they talked and laughed, and they enjoyed their time catching up. The next morning, she found him laying on his stomach on the floor next to his bed. I’m not sure if that image ever leaves her mind.
So here’s the truth about grief that these self-help books, the bible, and what other texts don’t ever try to tell you: that shit never goes away.
It doesn’t. It really doesn’t, and I’m tired of the usual phrases people say to you like, “God knows best,” or “They’re in a better place.” It’s like…okay. Fine. All of that may or may not be true but does that alleviate the pain? No, it doesn’t. You know what I noticed? People are intensely uncomfortable talking about death. Death is this weirdly elusive fate that we know we will all meet one day, but when it happens to the people who are closest to us, something happens. There’s an extreme existential crisis like, “Why did this happen? Why do I feel like there’s a permanent gaping hole in my soul? What the fuck is even the point?”
You carry that deep and dark weight and people who haven’t gone through that experience really don’t know the right way to act around you. You can feel them hovering and wondering like, should I say something? Or should I pretend everything is fine? Should I treat them like nothing happened? Or should I envelope them in a hug? I watched that process unfold for my friends, colleagues, and extended family as well and to be quite honest, I checked out. I didn’t need to hear, “It will all be okay.” Because to me, it wouldn’t. It would, but not really. And that’s what people who haven’t experienced that level of trauma won’t understand. So instead of being around anyone with the risk of being triggered, I isolated myself and talked to God a lot.
The truth is, majority of the time, we don’t know when anyone is going to die. You can be healthy as hell, and just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A car accident. A murder. A fight. A deadly robbery. The possibilities are truly endless. You wake up, and you genuinely don’t know if you are going to make it home that day. You can plan on it, but do you really know? No, we don’t know anything.
But what I do know is this: we need to stop pretending that traumatic shit doesn’t shape who we are. People love to say, “Get over it.” That statement is triggering to me for so many reasons, but one of them is because I immediately think about white people who say/act like slavery wasn’t a deeply impactful era of history. “Get over it,” they say, “that was centuries ago.” Not understanding (or refusing to, anyway) that slavery, along with the destruction of Native American communities, is the foundation of what America was built on. Those tragedies literally set the course for the rest of our communities because it damaged us in a multitude of ways — economically, spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally. There is no “getting over it” but acknowledging it plays a huge part in healing for those communities. Those experiences set the tone and completely shifted access and reality for life as a whole.
I would say grief is similar in that; stifling the impact of what an unexpected death does to you only worsens the situation and hinders any potential healing. Because let’s be honest: before the death of said loved one(s), you were one person. Then after, you become someone else. There’s studies that show that traumatic events literally rewires your molecular makeup. It has such a powerful impact on you that it shifts the way you look at the world, reality, relationships, and yourself.
Grief affects everyone so differently. I had experienced grief before through the loss of my grandparents and familial friends. But there’s something to be said about sudden death. The person was alive, healthy, smiling. Maybe you even had a conversation with them the day before they died. And then the next day, they’re no longer living. There’s a tragedy in that in which you honestly never fully heal from. Two weeks after my brother’s funeral, I drank two bottles of wine by myself and drove immensely intoxicated and drunk to a friend’s house (And lived to tell the tale; I thank God everyday). I openly sobbed on the way to work everyday for at least 4 months after my brother died. I was in a misty haze with a lack of clarity in my vision and once, on the way to work, I got into a stupid car accident because I had disassociated from my body that much. I never talked about those experiences publicly. But they happened and so I know it happens to many people while grieving the unexpected loss of someone who you felt left this realm way too soon.
So I’m here to say: let’s cut the bullshit. These painful experiences leave such a mark on us that it does change us indefinitely. And that is the truth. Time helps to bring perspective. But you know the part that always hurts? Thinking of something and realizing you can never tell that person your thought. Or realizing you will never see their face again, hear their voice or laugh, touch them, see the light in their eyes. When I think about my brother’s hugs, I cry, because I know I will never get one from him again in this plane of existence. And that shit hurts. And there are times when I think of him and I smile and I’m grateful I got the opportunity to come back into this world in this lifetime being his sister and being exposed to his compassion and his strength. It’s all a mosaic of pain and beauty. But let’s be honest about the pain. Isn’t that the first step?
The truth about grief is that there are layers to this shit. Forget your own grief for a second, and imagine absorbing and being around other people who are grieving too, and watching the death change them as much as it changes you. I know my parents will never be the same again. My mom cut off all her hair about a month after he passed, and drifts away mid sentence sometimes. I know it’s because she is thinking about him. My dad feels it deeply, but rarely ever speaks about his grief. My brother Andy (Andre’s twin) has a permanent stain of sadness in his eyes that no smile or laugh can completely mask. He is missing his other half. My sister dips off at certain points of the day and I know it’s so she can grieve in peace. She also almost always wears black. My sister and brothers grew up together in St. Lucia before I was even an idea. Their experiences with Andre are riddled with old fights and laughter, walking to grade school together, and leaving their homeland country together at the ripe age of 17 (my sister, 16) when my mom was pregnant with me. I cannot even imagine the depth in that. And how do I deal with the grief? I have mastered the art of disassociation and numbness. I think we all have.
I realize how intense this sounds, but that’s the point. I’ve been thinking about rituals and how much they’re a huge part in many cultures across the world. There is power in some type of action that represents an emotion, connection, community, or all three. During her TIME 100 speech, Viola Davis talked about the Mandinka tribe and how women who are infertile partake in a festival that involves dancing and running out in the streets, yelling to the sky, hoping God will hear them and grant them a baby in their womb. (In this tribe, the greatest gift to receive from God was a child). The best part of this is that other people join in, raising their voices, hoping they can increase the chance of God hearing the women’s requests. This ritual gave space for their emotions, for their fervor, for their beliefs, for their sadness and pain. There’s a process there that is very therapeutic. In my family’s homeland of St. Lucia, it is expected to see a person who is grieving the loss of a close relative wearing black for up to or over a year (my sister finds comfort in this). In India, it is customary to wear white instead of black. In many African cultures, burial of the body is as sacred as the ceremony themselves. We honor the ones we loved so much while they were alive with us, and that honor and love never diffuses.
You learn to find joy again, and there’s this other part to grief too: there is another realm of your mind made present to you. You’ll be able to analyze situations differently, and new ideas will flood your state of consciousness. If you’re an artist, the next pieces you make will be critical and influential. Pay attention to the way you move through the world and the new level of vibration added to your creativity.
The truth about grief is that we should tell the truth. We are human beings and it’s okay to be affected by major life events, to need time and isolation, or to submerge in community. Andy had to explain to his boss why he wouldn’t be coming to work the day before he went to his twin brother’s funeral. Experiences like that are so infuriating for many reasons, but mostly because damn, our society does not give a fuck about people. We give a fuck about what people can do for us and that’s it. This is how it plays out in many sectors and fields. You don’t get time to process shit — it’s back to the grind. The truth about grief is that we need to understand it better. There needs to be even more research on the effects it has on many of our realities. But there also needs to be a surge of compassion for the way people may need to process any kind of trauma. Grief can be expressed for a variety of reasons, outside the death of a loved one. Once we begin to be more open and real about the experiences that impact our lives, we also begin to open portals and more spaces for community and healing to help lower the burden of carrying the extra weight that society, other people, and structural entities put on us to pretend we are robots, lacking emotional depth, for productivity.
We are not lifeless carcasses. We have a mind, a conscience, a heart. We think deeply about a variety of topics. We are influenced by other people and their words, voices, and ideas. We devour multiple forms of media and entertainment. We find solace in staring at a portrait in a museum, or by kicking a soccer ball in a field. We are connected by life, by the beating of our hearts, by the blood that surges through our veins and the blinking of our eyes. We are moved by the energy that flows between various entities. Earth is a life source. Why do we pretend death doesn’t shift everything we know about what it means to take a breath?
The truth about grief is that it’s grief. And it’s painful, raw, and excruciating. And important and honest and heartbreaking. It’s real, and we have to stop pretending it’s not. Emotional intelligence is a skill that requires spending time with our emotions to understand them and ourselves. All of our emotions, including the dark and intense ones, matters. I’m convinced that creating space to fully dig deeper into ourselves while we process grief or major life events will make this world a better place.
I’m 3 years old, running around the ranch style house my parents had in St. Croix. They are at work and Andre had to babysit me. Because he was 17 years older than me, at that age I thought of my tall, muscular and big brother as a giant. I’m the baby of the family, so everyone calls me baby by default. “Baby,” he pleads with my energetic toddler spirit, “Please sit down and come take a nap.”
“No!” I exclaim, and continue running around. At one point, I notice him falling asleep on the couch, and I climb on top of him and pinch his cheeks and knock on his head to wake him up.
His eyes flutters open and he sighs. I grin mischievously, wrap my arms around his neck, and whisper, “I love you brother.” I remember feeling his energy as he laughed and hugged me back. “Me too, baby. I love you too.”
I love you, bro. Always.
