Quick Thoughts on Grief
Random thought #3
Afternoon, Wednesday, September 9.
I was working on a section of a review article I had promised my PhD mentor by Friday. It was just an ordinary day — slightly rainy and cool outside, but perfect cozy indoors for a work session curled up in my armchair with a cup of blistering hot tea.
Then, my phone rang. It was a college friend I hadn’t talked to on the phone since we both graduated in 2018. Surprising, but she just moved to a neighboring city, so I assumed the call was probably about her settling in or visiting.
“Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.” She said with her usual deep, sassy, almost stiff voice.
“I’m just working, what’s up?”
“I have some bad news.”
My whole body tensed up. It was almost natural, but my mind immediately went to the worst. Could it be? It’s definitely not that, right? Who would it be? My mind instantly started going through our mutual contacts and my last communications with each one of them. I started preening myself, combing through my hair as if it was disheveled, as if that would calm my spiking anxiety. I had only recently lost a family member. I didn’t know how I could take another loss.
“What happened?” My voice was suddenly sounding deep and desperate.
Turned out my fear came true.
In the minuscule 5 minutes that followed, I learned of the unexpected passing of a great mutual friend of ours. At a loss for words, I inhaled in an attempt to mouth anything that came to my mind, but all that came out was a loaded sigh. I did not cry. My friend and I shared a moment of dead silence, gathering thoughts that were in 1000% disarray. “I don’t know what to say or think,” I said in an almost whisper. “Me either.” She replied. We asked each other to take care, and then we hung up.
Later that day, I attempted to go about my day normally. Still in doomed disbelief, I continued working on my article, worked out, showered, and went to my boyfriend’s apartment a building away for dinner.
He was still his playful self, but he noticed something was off. I stepped closer for a hug and he inquired about my day. I told him what had happened in almost an inaudible murmur before I was unable to choke back my tears.
I had not cried since receiving the news, and now I was sobbing uncontrollably. In that tiny studio of his, my great dam of emotions was obliterated with every little brick broken loose and floating about like asteroids ready to cause even more damage upon contact.
The 5 stages of grief:
- Denial and isolation
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
People who are grieving do not necessarily go through the stages in the same order or experience all of them.
Screw that.
For me, there was no sequence, only chaos. I was tormented in an unsurmountable wave of anger at how in the hell God or whoever had the audacity to take her back this soon, then I was thrown onto land and engulfed in the fire of remorse that I didn’t stay in touch remotely as much as I should after we left college, and before I could fully erupt in flames I got pulled away and dunked in the ice-cold pool that is knowing that as much as I don’t want to believe it, I know she is gone and her as a physical, breathing entity no longer exists. Climbing out of that imaginary pool, I am now left in the puddle of pure depression, tears dripping, hyperventilating but still unable to lift the heaviness that memories of her exert.
The memories are the only things I can hold onto now, but good God, it hurts just thinking about them. All my emotions manifest in physical pain as if my brain was telling me, “Forget about this and be a total douchebag or grieve and be in pain, your choice.”
Of course, it’s not like I get to choose.
Let me start this over again.
Recently, I suffered two losses in a month. One was a relative back home, who was a significant part of my upbringing for years before I moved for middle school; one was a great friend from college, who I thought was extra AF but always infectious with her sincerity and enthusiasm for making everyone’s day just a little brighter.
I am writing this scatter-brained seeming Quick Thoughts entry in an attempt to somewhat process what the now-multiplied grief is to me and to properly treat my sadness as a valid being that needs & deserves a painful but beautiful send-off.
As put perfectly by my mentor when I confessed to struggling with my mental state due to all the events that transpired: the beauty of life has its flipside of cruelties. In sharing our emotions, memories, and vulnerabilities with someone, we also risk pain and suffering on various levels, including loss. The physical and mental pain I am experiencing is a testament that it was all worth it to share with the people I’ve lost. The holes left behind are the indication that they were immensely beautiful beings.
Beautiful indeed.
