Grief doesn’t always announce itself with tears.
Sometimes, it just makes you tired.
Forgetful. ANXIOUS!!! Impatient with small talk. Disinterested in things that once made you giddy. IRRITABLE!
Sometimes, grief looks like silence. Other times, it’s laughing too loudly at the wrong time.
It shows up as “I’m fine” in a text. Or that little pause before you say someone’s name, even years after they’re gone.
Grief doesn’t like attention. It certainly loves solitude and isolation. It wears ordinary clothes (sometimes, with shower optional alternatives like lots of cologne). It shows up to work on time.
It smiles at the neighbor. But really hates surprises. It eats lunch. Then sits in your throat for the rest of the day like something unswallowed. And then it clouds your eyes with tears – making you wait for the other shoe to drop. Did I mention the foreboding of doom. Not knowing that the worst has passed.
I used to think grief was a season. Something you pass through.
But I don’t believe that anymore.
Now I think grief is a shape-shifter. It comes and goes. It makes itself comfortable in strange places — in the song you skipped, the birthday you forgot, the photo you weren’t prepared to see.
And I’ve stopped trying to outgrow it. Instead, I make space for it when it shows up. Like a language, I try to learn its peculiar vocabulary. I let the words roll of my tongue. I let grief sit beside me. Not to be tolerated, per se. Just to be able to say, “Hi. I see you. Please no wahallah!” (ehehehe…) And really it’s enough.
There’s a quiet power in naming what hurts without expecting it to go away. A permission to redefine happiness and job in the presence of profound sadness. In fact, I am totally convinced that there’s a special ring of glory bestowed by our ancestors for allowing sadness to visit without trying to redecorate it as something else.
Anyway, this week, I’m not writing a solution. I’m just writing a recognition. Grief wears many faces. And it doesn’t make me broken to know them all.