Surprised By Grief
Surprised by Grief Grief can be such a tricky little bugger. It is so deeply personal and singularly unique to each person. It is indefinite, with no linear progression, and no baseline to compare one's intensity or frequency to determine if you’re “doing it right” because each grief-inducing event is so distinct. Grief is complex, sticky, and recently for me, surprising. I lost my mom 25 years ago to cancer when I was a teenager. I felt I had healed and enough time had passed for me to be generally “okay” with her death. While I definitely missed her, particularly around the typical holiday and birthday triggers, I would describe my feelings of grief related to her death as fairly minimal. But then, over the last three years came the surprises.
My wife and I experienced the birth of our two sons, a miscarriage, and the sudden loss of my mother-in-law to an aortic aneurysm in a three-year span. Each one of these events stoked the cool coals of grief from my mom’s death into something more bright, intense, and sensitive. As I reflect back on them individually and collectively, it’s easy for me to say, “No duh”. Of course, those bigger life events would in some way connect me to missing my mom more or intensify my grief, but the reality is that grief snuck up on me. The birth of our children, a miscarriage, and the unexpected death of a mother; those events took up enough space on their own in terms of coping and emotional labor. Underneath those very apparent flames though, the resting coals of my mom’s death reignited and became an added weight I was unprepared for.
I miss my mom more now that I am a father. I have sudden, intense flashes of sadness at random times with my children and imagine my mom with them and how she’d love them so damn much. None of the parenting books I read clued me in on this phenomenon, though we did absolutely crush sleep training. I also missed my mom more while helping support my wife with the grief of her mother’s sudden death last year. Though this one seemed a little more predictable on the surface, a more challenging aspect was the delicate balancing act of acknowledging my own grief connected to my mom’s death with the fresh grief of my wife’s loss. Part of this I was aware of, part of it was in my blind spot, and part of it I suppressed. My fallback was to attempt to put her needs over mine - I know, husband of the year over here. But her loss was newer, completely unexpected, and I didn’t want to add the extra burden of my old (new) pain on top of hers. And lest we forget, I am a licensed professional counselor so listening and supporting others is what I do for a living (this slippery slope is for another blog post).
It didn’t take long for all of this to catch up with me, even surprise me, with feeling off, drained, and more irritable. So I reprioritized my grief and no longer thought it was less than just because it happened 25 years ago. I shared more about my grief with my wife, family, friends, and other supports like my therapist, and sure enough, my load has gotten lighter. I feel more like my true self, have found more energy again, and am more patient and flexible while trying to keep up in the fast lane with two boys under the age of 3. I still have grandma envy when I see my peers and neighbors rely on their moms to help raise their families and the bonds our boys are going to miss without their grandma’s in their lives. That sucks, hurts, and is going to keep on hurting, because the truth is, even though this round of surprises appears over and my wife and I are in a much better place to handle that pain, grief can be such a tricky little bugger.
If you find yourself surprised by grief, reach out and let someone walk alongside you.