Grief is a heavy emotion. It shrouds everything with a bit of a darker hue. Even happy things don’t feel the same intensity of joy. One of the most difficult parts of grief is the illusion that it may last forever. There are tender and sweet parts of grief that I would never give up. And there is a secret I learned to getting through it.
Losing My Mother
This is a significant week for me. It is the anniversary of my mother’s passing; 7 years ago we lost her to Ovarian cancer. She was the emotional center of our home; mother of 6 children and married to my dad for over 30 years. Her mother thought she looked like a vulnerable little robin bird with it’s legs all curled up when she was a newborn and named her Robyn. Throughout her life she loved birds and even chose the name “flight” as her camp name as a young adult. This analogy of flight became significant for me in my process of grief.
She suffered with cancer for 4 years. Even when it was her time to go, it’s hard to ever be ready to say good-bye. I was living in China, and sobbed all 18 hours of the flight home to Colorado. I remember trying to write her a final letter, or say a final good-bye. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t quite get my mind around it. How could I sum up on a piece of paper what my mother meant to me? I gave up.
We were all surrounding her bedside as she took her last breath. She had been in pain, and now she was free of her earthly bonds and strains. We imagined her reunion with her parents, and her mother in particular who she had lost when she was only 14.
Those tender realities softened, but didn’t eliminate the difficulty of watching her lie lifeless on the bed, and be wheeled out of our home. The finality of the gurney wheels and the car door closing made my heart ache.
The day of the funeral, I felt numb. I greeted people and felt so genuinely loved and supported. It all felt surreal; I didn’t really know how to process not having a mother.
Losing Myself
In the days that followed I felt adrift. I’d think, “I need to call mom and ask her….oh.” I’d stop myself and remember there was no mom to call.
When my mother was alive, I would save up little things I wanted to tell her and write them on post-it notes around the house. I found myself still writing them. But, instead of calling they just accumulated. Little situations, daily tasks and exchanges with others–totally un-related to my mom felt heavier and harder. I was irritated more easily with others.
My mother was the one I depended on to remind me who I really was and give me a hit of courage when I needed it. I watched her as my model of how to mother, how to do hard things, how to think about the world, how to be a woman. All of that was gone. I felt anchorless. Where would I find my confidence and mentoring?
I had my mother’s picture in my hallway. Sometimes I felt like she was watching me. I became hyper aware of all my imperfections and became self-conscious. It was a dark time. I cried myself to sleep many nights. The emotions would well up at strange times—like a song on the radio, or when I saw her picture in the hallway. There were bittersweet moments too–like standing on the Great Wall of China where she’d wanted to stand with her grandchildren, without her.
I felt that who I was had changed. I felt like without knowing about this sentinel event in my life it would be hard for someone to fully understand me. My identity was different.
Grief
Sometimes our grief is obvious if we have lost someone we love. Other times our grief is less obvious if it is grief over a job loss, a spouse who changes, a divorce, a child who is struggling, poor health or the life we thought we would live.
The fog of grief has many sweet parts too–it is an indication of how significantly the person or thing you are grieving has influenced your life. I believe that is part of grief’s role–to help us focus in on the imprint left behind. Fully letting ourselves mourn the loss of something allows us to eventually let it go.
Letting it go often means letting a piece of ourselves go too, and replacing it with something deeper and more profound that we gain through the experience. Each person’s grief journey is different and the circumstances surrounding loss often inform our grief process differently.
Hope is the Thing
I remember for a long time the feelings of grief were so raw it was difficult to own them sometimes. I felt an affinity to anyone who had lost a parent—knowing they “knew.” My cousins had lost their mother to Ovarian Cancer about 5 years before. One day, in a tender exchange my cousin Marie Jackson shared this with me:
“You’ll never stop missing your mother, but the pain becomes less acute over time. One day you will be able to sit on your moms grave and eat popsicles and tell stories.”
I remember thinking about that over and over. It planted in me a small hope that I could endure this pain—knowing it wouldn’t last at this intensity forever. My mind began to think on a poem my Aunt Natalie had read at my mother’s grave-side service.
My Aunt Natalie lost both her parents, three siblings and a sister-in-law and many other loved ones. She knew loss. The poem she sharedwas elegant in it’s appropriateness.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
What is Hope?
It is a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. I love that analogy of hope as a bird. It’s perched in it’s nest, but has wings—which promise flight. Those wings promise greater vistas and new experiences, even if they aren’t available now.
Finding Hope and Taking Flight
Over time I began to feel hope. Not all the time. But little moments of it—like little pockets of light in the darkness. I would notice how beautiful life was in glimpses. I had a moment of joy watching my baby smile, my husband would make me laugh, or I would be enraptured by the all-consuming glory of a new blossom. These moments helped me realize the contrast between happiness and how I was seeing life most of the time.
It was almost as through I saw life through a filtered lens of grief most of the time. These moments of hope, reminded me that life would not always look this way. Hope “sang the tune without the words and never stopped at all.” It just kept gently reminding me of happiness and peace.
Little by little I began to feel hope more often. At times I’d sink back to a deep and painful place. That was important. I needed to be there. Feeling pain acknowledged and gave voice to my loss.
However, I still needed the hope that I wouldn’t always be there. Grief and healing are messy. There isn’t a neat step-wise process you complete and “heal” from. You don’t “get over” a loss. But, in my experience over time the pain becomes less acute and the shroud of darkness over everything begins to lift with time. The emotional and mental brain space the loss occupies becomes smaller and smaller over time and other things are allowed to take it’s place.
People who have never experienced the same type of loss can sometimes have a difficult time relating to the person who is grieving. What To Say To Someone Who Is Grieving. My aunt gave me some beautiful advice after my mom passed away. She said, “Carve out space and help people help you grieve.” I found that sometimes I had to ask a friend to listen when I needed it, or I needed to cry to my husband or my sister sometimes. Raw emotion would catch me at moments I wasn’t expecting like a song on the radio, or seeing her handwriting on a recipe.
Often I would long for her when I was lonely or struggling. I needed her encouragement. No one quite replaces your mother. She is the one person that doesn’t expect reciprocity. There is something so comforting about that. My mother had lost her mother when she was only 14.
She always told us growing up that there were “compensatory blessings” that the Lord provides to help us compensate for the lack of other things. I believed her, but wondered how that would play out. There were certainly plenty of lonely moments that didn’t feel very compensated!
Over time I did see lovely divine interventions and compensatory blessings. It never fully alleviated the ache of missing her or the absence of her in my children’s or my lives, but they did help. And, I found that I became a different person through the experience–someone stronger, but also more reliant on God and connected to others in a way I hadn’t been before.
As I began to see my life could be beautiful–even though it was different than I’d planned or would choose, it gave me more hope. Grief and hope wove a beautiful tapestry together and still has it’s ends unfinished.
Getting Stuck
Grief is a clean emotion—it’s cathartic and healing. We absolutely need to let ourselves feel it fully in order to let it go. However if we stay in it beyond what we really need, it can turn from grief to self-pity.
No one on the outside could ever determine when someone is in grief and someone is in self-pity. It is something only the person can know on the inside. It is a tricky tightrope to walk between the two. I know for me I knew I had crossed over into self-pity when I sometimes felt like a victim. Instead of feeling just sad about the loss, I began to resent others who didn’t understand or assumed they wouldn’t. Sometimes I expected others to feel sorry for me. It wasn’t a place I hung out in often, but I certainly learned the difference between grief and self-pity.
Self-pity is not a clean emotion, it is an indulgent emotion. I often felt worse after indulging in self-pity. I love the way CS Lewis describes this space. In “A Grief Observed,” a book he wrote after his wife died he says, “I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it–that disgusts me.”
Allowing our selves to feel the full weight of grief is cathartic, it helps us process it and eventually let it go. Conversely continuing to indulge in the “sticky-sweet pleasure” of our self-pity keeps us stuck. It is when we cross this line between the two that we keep our feathers held down. Hope can begin to wither and resentment and anger can take root.
Flying Free
After my aunt read Emily Dickenson’s poem at the graveside on the day of my mother’s funeral, my Dad had each of his children stand in a semi-circle. He told us as a symbol of letting our mother go, he had bird for each of us to release. One by one we each held a trembling white bird and let it fly into the air. Meanwhile the song “Amazing Grace” was playing.
As I let my bird fly free, it’s wings took it higher and higher until I could hardly make it out in the great expanse of the sky. I feel grief is a little like that. When it is close, it looms large and causes us to tremble. As hope lifts us little by little, our grief becomes smaller until it is only a piece of us–not all consuming.
Hope Continues
It has been 7 years since my mother’s passing. Last summer, we flew our children to Colorado and my husband and I took our four daughters to my mother’s grave. We sat around and told stories about my mom and ate treats as we talked. A lot of healing has occurred in the intervening years. I still miss my mother terribly, but my grief has lessened. As my cousin had promised, the rawness of the pain and longing is not as acute. The more life moves forward and I feel more hope that there is so much beauty to be had in my future.
It’s joyful to talk about my mother. I want my children to know her. With time, some of the holes she left have been filled by compensatory blessings—stronger dependence on God, a deeper connection with my husband, a new and richer interdependence with my sisters, finding wonderful mentors in friends and women in my community, and more courage to listen to my own heart. The little bird of hope continues to sing the song and never stops at all.
Find Hope
What are you grieving?
1. Grief is clean pain—it’s important to allow yourself to fully feel the loss.
2. The human spirit is resilliant—it wants to feel hope. As we notice and embrace our small hopeful moments they will grow and lift us to higher planes of happiness.
3. Remember you can feel grief and hope at the same time.