“What is grief if not love abruptly interrupted?
For the past few nights, I even have dreamt about Jenn. If you might have known early grief yourself, you furthermore may know that it brings a slew of strange, vivid dreams. Last night I used to be the manager of some massive hotel. I wore an apron, then a business suit. Sometimes I used to be holding Jenn’s babies. At one point, I used to be holding all these babies, asking them what I should say at their mom’s funeral. “Don’t mention video games,” the babies said. “She wouldn’t want that.”
In my dream, I kept searching the hotel grounds for her. Jenn can be in a single room. I’d go to search out her, only to find she had just left that room. I caught a glimpse of her long blonde hair leaving a room at one point, but I kept getting there too late. I kept missing her.
I keep missing her.
Because I don’t know what to do with all this nothingness and normalcy, with all these disorienting, nonsensical dreams, I just keep keeping myself busy. My errands grow to be a bit of manic, truthfully: I drive from Starbucks and Dunkin to Target and Walgreens to Costco and TJ Maxx. I’m frantically running errands to be helpful and, truthfully, to avoid my pain. Keep moving. Keep the motor on. Don’t stop. Just keep driving. Just keep running.
When we lose our people, the connection doesn’t just evaporate. Our twenty-five years of “Jonathan and David” friendship, as someone recently called it, didn’t die simply because Jenn did. And all that kinetic momentum doesn’t just dissipate; it demands to go somewhere. Grief, as others have said, is love with nowhere to land.
What is grief if not love abruptly interrupted? What is grief if not love’s collision with an invisible, impervious boundary? What is grief if not searching for Jesus to make Something from the Nothing that’s death? What is grief if not frantically running errands, hoping it is going to bring back your person?
While driving forwards and backwards from one to-do to the following, I’m listening to things in a blur, avoiding pain with noise as much as with tasks. Between podcasts and radio shows and YouTube videos and audio books, the whole lot runs together. In the mess of white noise, I hear someone, or several people perhaps, say some version of “It’s necessary to dig deep wells in your grief. In your heartache, fill yourself up. Soak life in, so that you simply grow to be a deep-water body of
wisdom.” This voice, or these voices—I don’t really know because grief- brain is soup- brain— suggest the griever fills up his or her days with literature, art, music, study, travel, experiences, wealthy creativity, and adventures. And I get it, I suppose. That’s an excellent formula for developing a deep-well sort of life, but it surely’s terribly tone-deaf advice in early grief. Digging deep wells requires the tools and the strength to jab and shovel the earth. And on this frantic, upside-down reality of fresh grief, it’s hard to do rather more than lie down next to a puddle.
When you’re falling to the bottom in tears every few hours or running around just like the proverbial chicken with no head, your only job is to exist. Someday you’ll have capability for “soaking life in.” But now shouldn’t be the time to feel any pressure or shame to do greater than you possibly can. With every ounce of strength I can muster (which is admittedly not many ounces), I provide you with permission, in your early days of grief, not to dig any wells.
Recovery is slow work. It takes a protracted long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long very long time.
I even have said this before but it surely bears repeating: you possibly can feel what you’ll want to for so long as you would like. Period. Done.
But, paradoxically, something else is true: Even as we are able to do nothing but exist—endure—within the absurdity and surreal normalcy, within the intrusive pain and seemingly countless tears, we’re someway becoming a deep well. Whether or not we wish to. Whether we do anything creative or meaningful. Whether all we are able to do is breathe, drink some water, and sit on the couch in a daze. Or whether we stumble through Target like a madwoman on a mission.
What I’m attempting to say is that this: Whatever you might be able to (or incapable of) in your fresh pain, you might have permission to only be. You even have permission to vary your mind throughout the times—throughout the minutes—about the very best strategy to be. In fact, not knowing what to do is a superbly reasonable strategy to survive the initial onslaught of grief.
And perhaps that’s the way it actually happens: You grow to be a deep well in early loss, not by digging or cultivating, or filling up your days with art and adventure, but by dealing in an entire lot of I don’t knows. By giving yourself permission to easily be, little by little, grace by grace—that’s the way you will develop the depth and fortitude essential to maneuver through heartache.
For me, I don’t know if I should keep driving from place to put, from one errand to the following, or stop running and check out on stillness for a bit. I feel like I’ve grow to be a flotation device, detached from my body, blowing and bouncing around aimlessly. So perhaps slowing down, getting still, would allow the voice of loss to talk its pain and help my healing. Maybe it will anchor me. Admittedly, I don’t quite know find out how to pause my internal engine long enough to are inclined to my needs. And I don’t really need to, not yet anyway. That’s okay. That can’t be forced either. Those days will come. Today, I permit myself to be. That’s all I can do anyway.
Grief launches us on an odd latest orbit, and for now, we’re getting our bearings while the earth reels in a completely different direction than we were used to. So let’s let grief take us wherever it must, and let’s not feel shamed or pressured to do or be anything. I’ll try when you try. Or I’ll change my mind about trying. That’s okay too.
I’ll inform you this. One place my early grief eventually takes me is a small, aching, defiant act. It won’t feel necessary or deep-wellish to anyone. But it’s a tiny, and in my mind, necessary strategy to pause and honor my pain and sadness:
Soon, it is going to be time to pack up the Christmas decorations for the yr, hauling them back into their space for storing within the attic.
As I do, I’ll think, Jenn was here, on this planet, after we unwrapped these. She’s not here now.
Such a noteworthy demarcation, such a notch within the universe’s timeline. Every Christmas any longer, Jenn won’t be on this planet. This is unnecessary to me, the best way death is unnecessary.
But I’ll pass over one winter twig of decorative greenery anyway.
I’ll wrap it in twinkle lights and set it by a framed photo of Jenn and me.
It’s not literature or theology, or a richly creative notion. It’s not adventure. But it serves as a tiny little breath blowing against the Nothingness. It is Christmas, persevering.
Now greater than ever, within the nothing and normalcy of death, I would like something sufficiently small to not feel like pressure but possible enough to face as a vigil.
Adapted from What We Find within the Dark: Loss, Hope, and God’s Presence in Grief by Aubrey Sampson. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.
Photo Credit: © Unsplash/Riccardo Mion
