Brushstrokes

What is grief?

This is a question one could ask anyone who has lost a loved one and would receive varied responses from different people.  Everybody responds to and experiences grief in different ways.   There are, however, the standard similarities.  Most of us are aware of the different stages of grief and are well versed in that journey.

So now, I write about my grief.  The reason for writing about my grief is not entirely clear to me.  I am not sure of what I expect to gain from the act of writing.  I don’t know how I am going to explain my grief, but I also know that once I start writing, I usually just keep going.  Writing is a creative outlet, which I hope will bring me some understanding or peace or maybe even an epiphany.  But what do I write about?  How do I express my pain?

I put some music on.  Music, for me, awakens a milliard of emotions.  I need to listen to the type of music that inspires me.  Coldplay tends to have that effect on me.  I now have some Coldplay playing in the background, serenading the flow of my creative juices and unlocking my emotions which have been stored away for years.

This January I embarked on a house reset and began the daunting task of decluttering.  It is a mammoth task as I live with some hoarders.  I am not entirely innocent of hoarding either.  I have had some considerable success so far.  I have decluttered cupboards, drawers and shelves that haven’t been touched for years.  I have also gone on an organisational rampage, which I have also met with some success.  After decluttering, everything was organised and accessible with spaces created to add anything new I might acquire.

The physical act of decluttering has been liberating.  It alleviated my stress and diminished my anxiety and depression.  What if I try to declutter my emotions?  That’s a scary thought.  Why?  Because it is.  So, I shall “be strong, and be brave”, and write my emotions away.

How do I declutter my grief?  If I don’t declutter my emotional state, those emotions will very well overflow and explode like all those cupboards, drawers and shelves, with absolutely no space to spare.  I need to declutter, so that I can be less stressed, alleviate my anxiety, think clearly and create some space for the new experiences.

We are too often afraid to bare our souls.  We are intensely protective of ourselves as self-preservation kicks in.  It does take a certain type of courage to put your broken heart on display.  Think of what could be possible by doing so.  Right now, I am hoping that my words will help alleviate someone else’s pain.  My focus is to give by sharing what is intimate to me.

I have never spoken about my pain.  I have kept it wrapped up in a brown paper package, tied up with string, with a red wax seal and stamp that says, “Do not open”.  There would be too much danger in opening that package.  Imagine the atomic bomb.  The carnage. But what if time heals and I open that package?  It has been six years, after all.

What if I open that package and find that there are several cannisters of paint in it?  There’s a painter’s pallet with paint brushes and an empty canvas.  Shall I dare paint?  One can paint their pain with different brush strokes and colours.  Everyone’s painting will be different because grief is unique to each person.  There is no wrong or right way to grieve.  Whether you paint a pretty picture or an ugly one, is up to you.  I would like to paint a pretty picture.  If my experience of grief can be used to alleviate someone else’s, then that’s a pretty picture.  How do I paint this picture?  Start with one colour, one brush, one stroke.  I choose the colour blue, a medium sized brush about the thickness of my thumb and draw a semi curved stroke from the bottom left of the canvas, trailing upwards towards the top right.  There!  That’s a start. 

My father, the first man to love me, hold me, protect me, nurture me, the perfect man who loved me wholly and unconditionally and taught me what love really is, passed away six years ago from an aggressive form of cancer.  The journey from diagnosis, prognosis and demise was sudden, short, horrific and beyond traumatic for him and all those who loved him.  Just writing this last paragraph felt like reaching into my chest, wrenching my heart out, tearing it into a million pieces and scattering it all over.  That’s ok.  Deep breath.  Sigh.  No fear.  I tread through this piece of writing, gradually, forcefully, placing one foot in front of the other.  Be strong, be brave.

I have never expressed my pain or my experience.  I kept it bottled up, tightly wrapped up in that brown paper package.  I have kept it hidden under lock and key for so long, I don’t know how to let it out, the key is stuck in the lock and won’t budge.  I need a locksmith to fix that lock so that I can open it.  Where is this locksmith?  I am that locksmith.

Grief never really goes away.  It stays with you for life.  However, it changes.  Grief is dynamic and so we journey through the many different stages of grief.  I have been through it all, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  I have wafted in and through all these stages at different times and in no particular order.  I might claim to be in a specific stage on any given day.  Of all the stages, the one that I am averse to is bargaining.  I think that is a precarious stage.  Once you indulge into the “what ifs”, and the “could haves and should haves”, you could spiral into the bottomless and relentless hole of survivor’s guilt. I have been submerged in this pool before, after the death of a friend.  I needed a session with a psychologist to delineate the not so pretty picture of myself wallowing in self-doubt and self-berating that so deviously sneaked into my psyche as a result of swimming in survivor’s guilt.  So, every time I find myself drifting towards the bargaining phase, I stop dead in my tracks and pivot.  I have, however, dipped a toe or two into the bargaining pool since my father’s passing, and it was exactly what I feared it would be.  It was excruciating and merciless.

Every experience in life is a journey.  Many journeys that come our way just can’t be avoided, no matter what.  If you try to run away from them, life has a funny way of bringing you right back to it.  It usually is an arduous journey this time around, as opposed to, if you had allowed yourself to journey it the first time instead running away.  So, don’t run away.  Easier said than done.  I have done plenty of running away, knowing full well that if I did run away the consequences would be a lot worse.  But I kept running.  That is what fear does.  Remarkably, we have a choice.  We always have a choice.  Be strong, be brave!

None of these journeys have to be done alone.  That’s what friends are for.  If you can be a source of support, that shoulder to cry on for someone else, do it!  Never be afraid of asking someone to be that shoulder for you, should you need it.  Asking for help is what being brave is.   It is a courageous person who asks for help. I have received immeasurable solace from friends and acquaintances who have been in my shoes.  I didn’t need their words because there are no words that can fix grief.  I just needed their presence, that shoulder, just knowing that they get it too.  However, it is essential to also find that support from someone who is a professional, someone who is not emotionally connected to you or your situation.  Someone who can be objective.  Grief counselling gives you answers that friends, family and familiarity can’t.  It gives you advice, techniques and an insight into your feelings and headspace.  It liberates you from the cruxes of grief and enables you to move forward in hope at your pace.  Paint your picture with your brushstrokes and be strong, be brave, be free.