Grieving is a difficult emotion. It can draw all your strength, leaving you numb, if not depressed. For a long time I too experienced this pull into the void of despair. Then one day it came to me what grief was. For me, grief is just a different expression of love. When grieving comes on, I now put my arms around the feeling, I let it take me for awhile. I cry and sob and feel miserable. After a bit, I ask myself why am I grieving so now? What event, or thing, or thought has set it off. As I search for the reason, I am still quite emotional, eventual the trigger comes to me. Once I identify the cause, I focus on the memory and let myself go there. I go there not in sadness but in happiness of remembering that time in our life. As I remember the good time and focus on the happiness then, my sobbing and crying stops as a smile comes to me just as if I were sharing that moment with my wife Arlind. The grief goes away, leaving a bit of sadness, but a whole lot more warm memories.
An example of this happened on Monday. Now that the estate has been settled, I needed an appraisal on the house for tax purposes. I did not know who to call. Then I remember that every year for more then twenty years, a realtor we met a couple of times would send Arlind a little pocket scheduler. Every year Arlind looked forward to getting one so she could keep our appointments and other things handy. Every year she would then talk about Lisa, the realtor she had met so long ago, and she would always say that some day we would need her help. Little did Arlind or I know that it was her death that would bring forth that prophesy.
Much to my surprise, Lisa remembered in detail Arlind and our home.
I am telling you all this because shortly after I started talking with Lisa, I lost it. I told Lisa I would have to call back. Hanging up, I let the grief surround me, I embraced it, then I focused on how much that little calendar meant to my wife and the joy she had when it came in early Dec. I remembered the conversations we had then in much more detail then if someone had asked me about it. Soon the sobbing stopped, replaced by a warmth and smile as this little memory brought forth the other side of love, and that is happiness.
In accepting grief as an expression of love, it has become fairly easy for me to move the current link to a memory from grief to the other side of love, and that is warmth and happiness. This took me a long time to come to, but with each effort, I have built a foundation of happy memories that I can joyfully share with others, but more important, retreat to myself. I have also employed the same technique to those dark times, like when Arlind died in my arms. Without going into detail, I actually did find a path to lessen the emotions memories of that time bring on.
In our living room, there is a plant that Arlind kept from the funeral of her previous husband following his death in 1981. I knew the history of the plant. I was never jealous as she tended to it for all those so many years. I continue tending to it as she did, in doing so, I keep her memory alive with a smile and my live goes on as did hers then.