I have been participating in state training for a rape crisis team I am volunteering for and I have learned some amazing things. One of the guest speakers who came to talk to the trainees was a Rec. Therapist. She had our group participate in all these different activities together in order to become closer as a whole and after we would participate in each activity she would open up a group discussion by asking us what specific events stood out to us during the activity, and why? The first activity we participated in was a picture activity. She would hold up a 5"x6" card with a picture on it from a different angle and we were supposed to talk about what it was we were looking at. The pictures ranged anything from laundry spinning in the dryer taken from the perspective of one of the articles of clothing, to staring up from the bottom of a hole with a rope dangling from the top. The pictures, depending on how you looked at them, could come across as so many different images, and it wasn't until we all started discussing, in detail, what we saw that the group would finally come to the same conclusion as to what we were looking at. The question was asked of us, "What does this have to do with grief?" What I learned from this lesson was that grief looks different to everyone, grief takes on so many different forms, and regardless of how many times grief is explained to us, it still isn't always clear.
I have a competitive spirit and so whenever a new picture was shown, I wanted to be the first to answer correctly what the image was and so I found myself desperately trying to take in the entire picture all at once and not zoning in on one specific thing and then processing the image from there. What I noticed as I did this was that I was feeling panicked and confused. Everyone was talking at the same time and I was trying to take in everything they were saying, as well as trying to understand it from my perspective. It didn't work and I was panicking. Have you ever gone to a museum and you see those people who stand in front of the same piece of artwork for what seems like forever and then they go to move, but instead of going to another piece, they step a couple of steps to the right and step back and continue staring at the same piece? Meanwhile, you are half way through the exhibit. What are they staring at? Grief is like a massive painting with delicate detail. You look at the masterpiece that is Grief and there is no way you can internalize it all at the same time; rather it can take moments, minutes, hours, days, months, but most of the time it can take years of coming back to the same moment- the same picture- to look at it from a different angle to try and understand it from a different perspective. And, in it's own right, grief is beautiful and sacred like the most cherished pieces of art.
Everyone has grieved. Whether you are grieving the demise of your lucky soccer shirt, or you are grieving the death of your dearest friend, everyone has grieved. No one experiences grief the same, which is why grief is a masterpiece, because it is of your own creation and lasts as long as you need it to last, it is your own. And like everyone in the group, all describing what they saw in the pictures at the very same time and trying to make sense of it, grief is confusing. And, like me, trying to take in the image all at once while listening to the chaos around me confusing my own understanding of what it is I was seeing, grief cannot be rushed. There is no medal at the finish line. There is no finsih line, rather, the race just gets easier with time and eventually you no longer notice what place you are in, or who is ahead of you, but you start to notice the beauty of what is occurring around and within you. When you are with someone who is grieving, don't talk at them, don't tell them what to expect to have happen, don't make false statements that one day soon they will feel better, and never suggest that they should be done with it and move on. Share with them, if they ask, what grief was like for you and that it's okay to be confused. They might not ask you anything at all and that's okay because they need time to internalize what has happened and life doesn't always have to be filled with dialogue. Sometimes, life needs to be felt, and feeling doesn't involve speaking, so in times like these, sit with them, hold their hand, and let them cry or not cry, whatever they do, let them do it because that is their unique expression of pain and there is nothing wrong with it. Don't confuse them with the process, because the explanation of the process is just a bunch of meaningless words and it can confuse them if they even hear what you are saying.
Last of all, for this post anyway, grief isn't wrong. During the picture activity, someone would say what they thought the image was and another person would chime in, "Are you crazy? It's not a drinking fountain! Can't you see that it's a straw looking up to the opening of a soda can?!" Well, no, they couldn't see that and there isn't anything wrong with them for not seeing that. It is easy for some people to look in on someone grieving and to wonder how long they'll do it for and why are they still grieving, it's already been long enough since [insert trauma] happened, hasn't it? No, grief doesn't have a specific finishing time. It is also easy to tell someone who is grieving why they shouldn't because, "Can't you understand that [insert name] is in a better place now? He's happier, you should feel peace knowing that. He wouldn't want you to feel sad, he would want you to be happy, so be happy." Grief would be so easy if that were the case, but we are human, and being human is complicated and so we aren't able to, simply, turn off our sorrow. While one person may feel peace knowing that their loved one is, "in a better place"; to someone else, that loved one was the father of their children and their husband and best friend and they will never see them again in this realm, so, they don't feel happy that he is, "in a better place," because according to them, that "better place" was safe, at home with their family. And, now home feels empty and cold because it isn't filled with the life-force that was their loved one, rather it is filled with their memory in the mug that they drank their coffee from every morning, and the drity clothes hamper that is empty with pile of dirty laundry that "loved one" never put in the hamper, but instead left on the floor next to the hamper and that used to upset grieving person who now feels bad for all the arguments shared over that pile of clothing . Grief is not the same for everyone and can not be forced to completion, neither does it last for the duration for them as it did for you. Grief varies as many times as there are people on this planet and does not end just because, "It's been long enough".
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