I’ve always enjoyed a good podcast and recently I started listening to Anderson Cooper’s podcast, All There Is. It focuses on grief and while I’m barely two episodes in, it’s given me a lot to think on.
I lost my grandmother 6 years ago in June. I was 14 when it happened and I don’t think I ever really dealt with the grief of her passing. I remember I wanted to write this profound reflection on her death. I believed that if I could turn one of the worst moments of my life into something artistic and productive then all that pain would have a purpose. As if I needed a purpose to feel angry and sad and lost.
I never wrote it.
I always felt like it was ‘too late’ or ‘not good enough.’ My grief was defined by arbitrary rules I put around it because I was too afraid to face the fact that I had lost her. I never told anyone, aside from maybe 1 or 2 people. I never expressed that I was going through a loss.
Was I supposed to? I don’t know? I don’t think so. Everyone in my life knew she lived with me and held a prominent place in my life, but announcing she was gone felt performative and unlike her. I didn’t want to make a spectacle of her death that garnered questions and pity from people I never really spoke to. Also saying something meant it was true and real and something I needed to face. I didn’t want to admit that she was gone and that I was hurting.
When I did grieve and opened up to people I felt so uncomfortable, like I was forcing myself to grieve a certain way. That time in my life was already difficult and now I was trying to navigate a life without her. I was pressured to be vulnerable with people and I lightened my grief for the comfortability of others. I wish I had been more genuine and honest with people I really trusted and felt myself around. Maybe then, I wouldn’t feel like I still need to face my grief now.
Or maybe I would.
It’s not a linear thing, it’s not a beaten path. It’s not anything I am familiar with. Grief over a lost loved one is something that I cannot wrap my head around. Every time I think of her and those feelings, I feel 14 again.
I’m not really sure what I’m doing or even saying. All I know is that this is the first time I am really addressing my grief to myself. The first time I am really allowing myself to remember and accept. They say there are five stages of grief but they don’t tell you that you’ll go back and forth between them for the rest of your life.
To anyone that has lost someone, recently or not, it’s okay to feel and it’s okay if your process of grieving looks different than what you think is ‘the right way.’ There is no right way, there just is.