On grief bursts, or joy as a gateway to sorrow
There's no predicting or planning for such moments.
It began with joy — a slow, warm unspooling that put a smile on my face.
Though I’m not a frequent user of Facebook these days, I was delighted this morning when its Memories took me back to Italy, presenting my mom and me among the ruins of Pompeii on a group tour we’d taken 10 years ago. We’d traveled with two couples, longtime family friends, on our first big trip together, crossing over into Austria at the end. And as I scrolled through photo after photo — Look at us, cruising the Gulf of Salerno! Lunching at a quaint outdoor cafe in Orvieto! Re-enacting scenes from “The Sound of Music” in the Salzburg countryside — I couldn’t help marveling at all we’d seen and done. How for days on end we’d steeped ourselves in a surfeit of wonder and enchantment, thinking this moment right here — gliding in a gondola by moonlight across the Venetian Lagoon or watching fireworks from our hotel balcony in Sorrento — was the best until we were ushered to a new adventure, another treasure of an experience waiting to be had.
The trip in some ways was a lifeline, an impulsive decision made to carry us from a year of grief into a profusion of splendor in the hopes of softening the jagged ache of loss. Of recalling how to give ourselves to unstinting gladness. The year before, my mom’s partner of 18 years had died. He’d been a father figure to my brother and me, and his death, from pancreatic cancer, was as swift as it was sudden.
Though I knew we couldn’t escape our grief, on some level, I think I was looking for a bigger container for it — a capaciousness that allowed for our sorrowing but insisted, yes, our broken hearts could hold this giddiness, too.
I never imagined that just three weeks after returning home from Vienna I’d be on another flight, heading to St. Lucia to sit at my dad’s hospital bed as he took his last breath.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, that as I clicked through the photos in my album this morning, grinning and sometimes laughing out loud at my exuberant captions, something else began to stir. A quiet wistfulness and then a bruising pang. There was grief, that familiar companion, squeezing my heart once again.
I had been gazing at so many pictures with Julie, my mom’s best friend who’d joined us on our tour with her husband Garth. And I’d been smiling as I did so, noting her infectious joy and signature pose in so many photos —arms flung wide as if proclaiming her own amazement at her good fortune to be where she was. But as I came to a memory I’d forgotten, she and I sitting side by side on a river cruise of the Danube, her head tucked against my shoulder, the tears started sliding down my cheeks. And they wouldn’t stop.
Julie died in 2020— another swift and sudden loss that still feels unreal. One minute she was perfectly healthy, the next she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and died just before she was to start chemotherapy.
This month, Julie would have turned 71. Maybe it was the proximity to her birthday, maybe it was the photo beaming her elation at me…or maybe the recent passing of the fall equinox, bringing me into what I call my melancholy season…but what had begun as a lighthearted foray down memory lane gave way to an intense burst of grief.
I went from missing Julie to missing my dad to wondering how it could be possible that October will be 10 years without him, my longing cutting as fresh and deep as if he had died only weeks ago.
That’s the way it is with grief. We never know what will cause an eruption or leak. What will sting where we thought we’d found peace, sear and undo us in the midst of an OK, and even good, day. There’s no predicting how a moment of joy becomes a gateway to sorrow, no armor ample enough to keep the heart from reeling whether it’s been one or two or 20 years.
And yet the thing so many of us fear, the utter collapse into anguish and despair, the certainty that we’ll never recover if we give into our grief, is rarely what happens.
Our grief wants to be acknowledged and felt. Wants to move through us as it presses against our ribs, drops into our bellies, cramps our backs and hips, lodges in our throats. In that moment, the moment we think we’ll crumble to the ground and remain there, a sobbing, snotty, inconsolable wreck, all our grief is asking for is our own compassion and care. A shift from resisting the unbearable hurt to curiously welcoming it, and asking it what it needs.
For me, this morning, that meant a pause. A slowing down to simply sit with my grief and feel what I was feeling. To greet it with gentleness and a hand on my heart, breathing through each wave. For long minutes, I sat like this, on a cushion on the floor, letting the tears well, noting the tightness in my chest, radiating a heavy heat. Allowing the missing, the yearning, whatever wanted to surface — holding it all with love, as if I were comforting someone dear to me.
After a while, the tears stopped. The pain subsided. My body settled into a greater ease. And I was ready to go on with my day, more tender-hearted, perhaps, than when I began it but also more open to life’s sweetness, waiting to pour its salve into each plaintive furrow and crack.
Thanks for this piece that holds so many reminders. First, just recently my phone has been reminding me of a trip to Scotland where I connected to ancient ancestors. I need to write more about that. Recent connections to historical ancestors here in NZ had me deeply missing my loves thinking of how intrigued they would have been on all fronts. Grief flared. Then I reminded myself that in their current realm, I’m sure they know much more about ancestors than I ever will while walking the earth plane. Sending love and gratitude and so pleased and comforted to see you in this space. 🖤🙏🏽