How is grief today?

I made a new friend this week, someone with whom I seem to have a lot in common. We are both lapsed PhD students, and were sent on somewhat of a blind date after being put in touch by my thesis supervisor. We had many helpful conversations about our PhD journeys, but it turns out that along the way we have each experienced the profound grief of losing a loved one; in her case a boyfriend, in my case a child.

Speaking to someone who has had to face death head on is something I don't get to do very often, as most of the people I know are fortunate, as I was until recently, to be still naively unaware of death's very real and pernicious impact. Also, not everyone who has lost a loved one embraces grief and opens themselves up to its ravages as I have. Some people I've known have, conversely, let grief shut them down, and consequently you get the sense when talking to those people that they don't really want to be fully present in your experience either because your very visible and unapologetic grief perhaps threatens to make them reflect on the feelings they've very carefully and deliberately locked away in the unconscious recesses of their mind.

To talk to someone who was willing and able to share, and reflect upon their own experience of grief, in all its messy realities, was so valuable. Sometimes strangers, I've found, are willing to sit with you as you describe your suffering in a way that people close to you find it too difficult and painful to do. We discussed a lot of things that seem to happen when you are mourning someone who has died: the distorted sense of time that messes with your mind, your inability to focus or concentrate on anything, the sense that all about you is fleeting and temporary, the sleep disturbances, the pools and pools of tears, the tumult of emotions that oscillate from the very internally experienced emotions of  regret, guilt, and disbelief to the very external experience of anger and bitterness and injustice.

During our two-hour conversation I felt, powerfully, heard.

In a follow up email this very wise woman asked me the simplest yet most thought-provoking question: how is grief today? The question is an evocative one, and in four simple words, that anyone can utter, does a number of really important things. It recognises that grief is something that stays with you all the time, even on the days when you're back at work and wearing a smile, and thinking of the future, in short, on the days when most people think you've 'recovered'.

Secondly, it recognises that grief is not one experience, but an umbrella term under which a person has many experiences, both physically and emotionally. On some days grief feels like a heavy burden to shoulder, and one you're keen to get rid of, and on others it feels like a badge of honour you carry on behalf of your loved one; that your grief will ensure their immortality.

The question also recognises that grief occupies its own very real space - it is personified by the question very accurately as either a companion or an appendage. As time goes by, you are able sometimes to put grief away as you would a favourite book on a shelf, having memorised and internalised some parts so that it is always a part of you, and having the other parts bookmarked and archived somewhere discrete and separate to you, but which you can visit or call upon at any time. As time goes by I've noticed that grief becomes more malleable - you can move it around, put it down, look at it from different angles, change its face, or bathe in it. You begin to learn to wield it and tame it and direct it, though of course sometimes it still rears up like an angry beast, pins you to the floor, as asserts its authority. It's just that it does so less often.

So, how is grief today? It's anxious, mostly, and interfering with my sleep by intruding in the form of horrible nightmares in which various members of my family die painfully and I am unable to stop it. It's not that these dreams are new - anxious nightmares of being abandoned are really my thing. I used to have a recurring nightmare that I was on a ship with my family and one by one they all drowned, whilst I ran around trying to save them, and always turning up a moment too late. It's just that those dreams are scarier now that I'm very conscious of the fact that any one I love really can, and one day will, just up and die, despite any intervention on my part. Confronting Max's death means I can no longer sooth myself with platitudes such as 'it was only a dream, just a silly nightmare' because I know that sometimes the stuff of those nightmares does emerge in your waking life, and is all the more frightening because you know yourself to already be awake.

Grief today is also dragging and exhausting in a way it hasn't been for at least a couple of weeks. I haven't moved from the couch today. I feel sat upon by something very heavy and suffocating, and it is not my cat. I can't seem to muster the energy to do anything except nap on and off, which is in contrast to the active, busy way I've managed to get things done recently. I feel that I may be coming down with something, but I also know this is probably not true and that this exhaustion is all just a part of the cycle to be endured.

Often grief is quiet and insular, as it is today. It makes me unable to tolerate any noise and unwilling to talk to anyone if I can get away from it. It craves silence and inactivity, and on those days, when all else is quiet, it is ever present in its guise as intense sadness and regretful reflection.

Today grief forces me to huddle under a blanket and sink into the soft furnishings, where I'll stay until it comes tomorrow with a new face.