The Hard Work of Grieving Begins

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have had the support of a grief counselor for the past few months, support that has helped me think through, process, and express my grief. And one of the key takeaways of that support has been a delineation of the phases of my particular grieving process.

For the first few months, I was locked into this sort of ‘protector’ mindset, which meant I was thinking primarily about my daughter E, my family, even my friends and how we were all going to cope (2020 really was the worst). That made sense at the time, particularly with respect to my daughter: I had this sort of ‘papa bear’, aggressive mindset focused on protecting my kid, making sure she would have a great childhood in spite of the circumstances. That mindset, combined with the logistical nightmare of dealing with Chelsea’s passing, consumed my focus and energy for a while.

That all changed a month ago. Thankfully, it became obvious that my daughter was going to be okay, which triggered a seismic shift in how I was moving through my grief. That initial focus on others meant that I hadn’t focused as much on my own emotions and reactions, resulting in a hell of a lot of pent up emotional energy. I can distinctly remember the Friday night when the flood gates opened: I was sitting there, thinking about finding Chelsea’s body, and I realized that I never had the opportunity to scream and cry (I had to call 911 and make sure E was okay). So I started screaming into a pillow, and I started crying, reliving the trauma of that day. Ever since that Friday, the emotions have been coming, and they’ve been coming hard. In yet another chapter in the oddity of my grieving, I miss Chelsea even more now than I did early on, and it’s getting more difficult emotionally than it was early on.

Perhaps one silver lining to this process is that my delayed reaction is happening four months after the fact, which means there is some space between her death and my emotional processing of that death. That space means that the intensity of the emotions isn’t as great as I think it would have been early on, almost like turning the volume down on your iPhone.

But it’s still hard, really hard. I tell myself that I’m doing the hard work of grieving, that each hard emotional day is a step forward on the grieving path. That helps a little bit, even if it doesn’t change the length of the path ahead.

My empirical side wants to ask questions like, how long is the road, or how quickly can I move down it? But the experience of the last four months demonstrates quite clearly that I’m not really in control of my journey: grieving follows its own timeline, and I have to experience emotions as they come. Not a bad reminder: Chelsea’s death was the ultimate lesson concerning the limits of control we have on our lives, but I still cling to this impulse to want to plan and control. It’s helpful, even if difficult, to have those reminders of how those plans can be futile. Not that I think planning is a bad thing, just don’t rely too heavily on those plans, and be prepared to shift in response to life happening.

Still…this process is really f*%$ing hard.