Why Grief Never Goes Away

The pain of loss can subside, but does not disappear entirely because it’s unrequited love

“Grief is shattered glass.”(Joshua Thomas, psyche.co)

No one can escape the influence of grief, the intense emotional pain of losing a loved one, whether human or non-human. Grieving is an unavoidable part of the human condition.

The world commiserates with the griever for a while, but not for a day more. It wants the mourner to get back on their feet and move forward with their life. It is as if feelings can be erased at will to meet the world’s expectations.

People grieve uniquely. No two people can have the same experience of grief. We process the loss in our own ways, no matter what the world thinks about it.

Grief is an intense personal distress that pauses normal life. It shakes and jolts us out of our complacency.

No one heals from grief because it’s a permanent wound, an indelible mental scar. It lurks in the subconscious mind, stalking us in unsuspecting moments.

Grief has different stages for different people.

The Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s two books, Death and Dying and Grief and Grieving, introduced the five-stage model of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Her model was a general template, not a universal one. People go through the stages differently. Some even skip stages. For example, most people do not experience denial or bargaining while living with a loved one who is terminally ill.

She said that her theory of stages was “never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages.”

Joshua Thomas is an associate professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in Queens, New York.

He lost his mother to pancreatic cancer a year after the diagnosis.

A couple of months later, while cooking dinner, a glass slipped from the countertop, fell, and shattered into pieces. While mopping up the broken pieces of glass, he was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. Grief came back at him viciously. He couldn’t make sense of the sudden outburst of sorrow.

He thought of his grief as shattered glass. Just as undiscovered shards of broken glass could be scattered around, pangs of grief lurk in the subconscious mind and erupt suddenly, catching us by surprise. He said,

“Understanding grief as shattered glass reminds me to accept the sharp edges of being alive. It reminds me that grief is unique and that mine need not look like anyone else’s. It helps me accept that we can never completely clean up what breaks.”

Grief really never goes away. It is an unhealable psychic wound. The passage of time can only mitigate its severity and pain, not erase its scar.

Like unseen broken pieces of shattered glass hurting us, grief overwhelms us unexpectedly in some vulnerable moments. Joshua Thomas said,

“None of us can ever step inside the first-person experience of another’s grief to know it directly. But if I explained to you that my experience of grief is like shattered glass, I’ll wager you have a truer, more vivid sense of what I’m going through than if I simply told you ‘I’m grieving.’”

Grief is a delicate and complex emotion, which we have to process with care and sensitivity. It’s not a wound that can be healed or an enemy we can vanquish.

It’s an inevitable part of human existence, a pain that teaches us the value of love.

In a way, grief is unrequited love because the loved one is no longer with us to reciprocate our feelings.

Grief is shattered glass; it’s also deep love struggling to find expression.

Grief is love in disguise. Let’s learn to live with it because it has the power to lift our mundane existence into the lofty heights of deep purpose and meaning.

Thanks for reading!