Photo by Felipe Coelho on Unsplash
I’m tired of hearing the same line over and over again — “Grief comes in waves and it’ll pass”. It’s not a wave, it’s a tsunami.
Let’s be honest with ourselves here.
For those of us chosen by some some cruel twist of fate to experience the kind of everlasting grief, that makes everyday an eternal attempt to stop drowning in your own sadness, that sounds like complete bullshit.
But, maybe the fact that this wave becomes a tsunami, is exactly where we start to understand it — and slowly learn how to hold our ground.
Beware the Wave — It’s Coming for You
I lost my father back a year ago, after half a decade of fighting to keep him alive through his journey with cancer. I knew our days with him were numbered. My anticipatory grief — a valiant but desperate attempt by my mind to prepare me for the inevitable, had already begun to set in. But nothing prepared me for the reality of grief and the waves that it brought after.
Imagine — you’re having breakfast. You glance through your favorite social media app as if its a ritual you cannot skip. Then you see something — a post that made you think of them.
Here we go now. The wave is starting to form. Brace yourself.
You start feeling a little choked up. Suddenly, random moments with them from every corner of your life start hitting you hard, as if you’re standing under a hailstorm. You grab the table, trying to ground yourself but behold, the wave has other plans.
For a moment, you think you’re fine — until suddenly, you remember something you shouldn’t have. Their face when they were suffering, a happy memory you’re trying to dive back into or maybe the thought of something never happening again because of their death.
The wave has finally become a tsunami. This is it.
The wave of grief has now fully engulfed you in all its glory. You are now submerged deep inside the water of sadness and you feel like you’re drowning. You try to hold back your tears until you inevitably bawl over your breakfast, making your eyes hurt.
The Ghosts of the Past Are Here to Stay
Photo by Kevin Escate on Unsplash
I’ve spent the whole year trying to investigate why this phenomenon seems to happen. What makes something as simple as a wave of sadness that should pass over you and let you be okay, takes control and tries to drown you. Some might call it the brain rewiring, or hormonal imbalance, or the way our memory works.
I like to think about this in a simple way. Ghosts.
When we lose someone that we loved with such enormous depth, where they become a part of our very own soul, their existence becomes quiet different. They now live in every room of our house and in every corner of our minds. Their absence lingers on like a ghost, always present, never gone.
A few months after my father’s death, the world became highlighted with reminders of his absence. It’s strange — things that normally blended in the background, such as his coffee mug on the table, his phone ringing besides his bed or his favorite song playing on Spotify, now seem to scream out his passing every time I’m near them. They’ve become ghosts — remnants of a past that refuses to stop haunting me, bringing waves and tsunamis full of sadness that will eventually crash down on me.
Why do the ghosts exist then?
Part of what makes grief like this so terrifyingly beautiful is the love that’s behind all of this pain. We feel grief with such overwhelming force because we also loved with the same brutal and soul-crushing intensity. I’d like to believe that these ghosts that haunt me and the waves they create throughout the day, might be my father leaving his essence throughout my life and my surroundings. They might feel overwhelming and make me cry, but it’s also a reminder that I loved my father with all my heart when he was here with us.
It’s now up to us to learn to accept these waves and stop them from becoming tsunamis.
Riding The Wave Without Sinking In
Photo by Kellen Riggin on Unsplash
I think what my journey through these waves and my life with the ghosts of my past has taught me, is that grief as deep as this is not just a wound or a scar; it’s you being reborn. While you may never go back to the past to experience what life was back then, you do have the chance to take all of this sadness and mold yourself into a version that your departed loved one can be proud of, living each day in their remembrance.
Stop trying to fight the wave. Seriously.
If you ever feel like the wave has hit you hard and you don’t want to feel the power of the tsunami, try to stop fighting it. Let the wave come naturally to you, make you cry and leave you as you were. The more time I’ve spent trying to calm down from the panic of remembering my father instead of, letting the memories flow, the more pain and sadness has remained inside me and turned into something far worse. “Let it be”, as the Beatles said.
Express yourself. It doesn’t matter how.
Overtime, I realized that all this pain needs to go somewhere. Then I discovered writing. Once something of no particular interest (other than writing comments on YouTube), has now become a new avenue for my feelings to transform into words that inspire others to do the same. Expression isn’t limited to writing only. For my sister, it was art and the freedom to paint her mind onto the canvas. For my mother it was singing her heart out when times got tough.
Find one that makes your soul feel lighter.
And lastly,
Finding and talking to those in similar shoes.
Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. — Fred Rogers
This was another aspect I wasn’t prepared for; grief can also change the way we talk to others and exist in society. Interactions with most people who have never gone through this pain, will naturally not understand you. But as I’ve slowly gained my courage of posting about my grief online or talking with friends and family going through the same issue, I’ve felt far more lighter throughout my day. Reading about the many different stories of people from all walks of life about their loved ones or how much they just miss them, truly makes me understand that I am never alone in my sadness. Neither are you.
Maybe the waves will exist throughout our lives. Maybe they will turn into giant world-ending tsunamis that will surely engulf and drown us. Maybe the ghosts of our past will never stop haunting us as long as we are alive.
But we sure as hell can face them with compassion for ourselves, because sometimes surviving is still the bravest thing we can do.