Grief and Me
Amrita Tripathi
Sometimes I think deep Grief makes us unknowable, unfathomable, certainly unreachable. I’m in my own underwater tank sometimes, watching people go by. Looking at life through some sort of plexiglass. Out of sync with other people’s space and time realities – that’s certainly how it feels in the immediate aftermath.
Maybe it would be helpful to know how to cope in a healthy way; to communicate instead of internalising or shutting down… it may even have been helpful to know that Grief can make you Hulk out. It may be surprising, given how much I empathise and connect with people through my work and IRL (not to mention that earnest public persona), but believe it or not, I’m sometimes *very angry and reactive, judging others harshly, even (god save us) wondering, Wait, why not you, why them?.
I can’t justify it but I also can’t deny that mean streak that surfaces.
How do you cope? How do you grieve? What’s healthy? How do you know when you’re going to break? You actually *don’t know exactly what’s going to bring you to your knees. What’s going to trigger you in the moment?
- Is it going to a crematorium to be there for a friend as they deal with devastating loss? (Maybe predictable – Grief compounds, after all)
- Is it going to be watching a silly video on social media or a movie or show with some super-cheesy content? (Harder to have guessed this one, but nothing like some corny dialogue about love and loving someone to hit you in the feels sometimes)
- Is it going to be a ‘day’ – a birthday or other significant event? (Not surprising at all)
- Is it going to just come for you one day out of the blue as you stare out your window? (What the hell was that?)
Grief as Love
It takes a good long time for you to come back to thinking of this as where love is speaking to you. The fact that you’re missing someone and grieving because it’s a testament to how much love you have for them. (Not past tense, note.)
But of course it’s not always in a gentle way, nope, not at all.
You may be lashing out at someone you really love, being a real banshee, and not for one moment do you connect the dots – if only life were that simple. (Oh, that’s what it was. I’m so sorry.)
Speaking of: I’m so sorry for me.
For My loss. I’m so sorry that this person I love is no long here. I’m sorry I can’t feel anything else right now.
By the way, sharing this in case it helps any of you – because these struck me as weird and I had no idea that these could be manifestations of the G. Of course grief can make you cry or lash out. But I learned that:
- Grief can make me nauseous. Extremely nauseous
- Grief can make me hungry as I eat to fill the void
- Grief can leave me exhausted, beyond fatigue
- Grief can masquerade as full-fledged denial. I ‘pre-grieved’, I said recently (much like Kieran Culkin’s character in Succession, and equally delusionally)
- Grief can make me throw myself into work, rushing against the clock, the depth of loss translating into the urgency of the mission at hand
- Grief can make me angry, cruel, harsh. To others, to myself
Nobody tells you that.
Do they? Have they? I would be so glad if they have done! If you don’t then judge yourself for feeling ‘weird’ feelings (one more thing to pile on to the old feeling train).
I’ll add one more: Grief can make me very edgy and paranoid.
The thing about losing someone you love (and I’ve lost several)... is that you can get paranoid about losing the ones who are still around. You can walk around, absolutely petrified about these giant cracks that apparently open up at your feet at any given time, no prior warning, that other people seem to be oblivious to.
‘We’re all going to die!’ you want to run around blaring, like some manic street preacher. (Avoid, no one seems to want to hear this message.)
There’s no ‘save yourself’ – there’s only ‘prepare yourself’. Brace for impact! (There’s no way to prepare, not really.)
As we know, it’s coming for all of us – death. But what we don’t realise is that heartbreak is right around the corner.
Why are we here when those we love aren’t?
A short video as part of our Grief series
I’m so sorry for your loss.
By the way I say I’ve ‘lost’ several loved ones as if they’ve gone “missing”. Reward 100 million if you can find X. (Please bring them back, I’ll triple the reward.)
Ok, so the good news is you can keep them alive too. Your love, their love, it keeps going, it's in the present tense.
But one sad day you realise you’ve forgotten some nuance, and that’s another heart-rending split.
Why didn’t we record every laugh, every conversation, every joke, every comment? Why didn’t we memorialise every possible moment?
Have you *betrayed a loved one by ‘moving on’ with your life – the answer is no, my dear reader, but I know why and how that question arises and how it can be a body-blow.
The glimmer of good news of course, is that their love stays with you. They would want you to be living a good life, to be happy even at some point (if it’s too soon to think this is possible, I hear you and feel you. 💜)
And that brings me to the final point: Why aren’t we focusing on the ones we love who are still here? Why aren’t we focusing on the here and now? It’s all we have.
Apart from our pilot Talking/Listening Circles on Grief (More planned/ E: team@healthcollective.in for more information), we’ve also got some resources up on The Health Collective on coping, and how you should know there’s no one way to grieve. Some links below including from lived experience.
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I hope some of it helps.
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