What is grief? Is the first question that popped up in my mind when I witnessed the loss of a loved one through the eyes of someone very close to me. A very special friend of mine lost her life partner, her spouse, last month due to COVID and she is still struggling to believe what has just happened to her within a span of 15days. Her life has turned upside down. But what I hear people telling her all the time is to move on and get over the grief, which made me think is it too easy to get over and move on?
I started searching everywhere for the meaning of grief to help my friend cope up with it and fight this battle that has been inflicted upon her at the young age of 33. The meaning of grief is, “intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death.” But do we really understand the underlying meaning of the word ‘intense sorrow’? Sorrow is like a dark cloud that hovers upon your head every moment of the day and with the passage of time this darkness starts engulfing your soul and it becomes too heavy on the chest that it is impossible to breathe and you find yourself gasping for air in the middle of the night. Sorrow is what makes you cry in the middle of a laugh, it is what takes away the spark from your eyes and you lose all your will to get up and get out of your comfort zone and talk.
When you have to deal with the intense sorrow of losing someone whom you have been with 24/7 for as many years as you could, till one of you decides to disappear into thin air, is grief. And then you are not even allowed to take your time out and the society starts pushing you to a corner encumbering you with the urge to feel and act normal. At that moment the person is already fighting a battle inside with the divine intervention that has disturbed their existence and taken away the only ray of hope they have been counting on since they say I do.
The deadliest effect of grief and trauma is the persistent feelings of worthlessness that destroys the willpower to live and function as a normal independent individual
I once read a quote by Oscar Wilde, he says, “The best way to get rid of temptation, is to yield it”- and it hit me at that moment, as an epiphany, that this is what we have to do for grief too; if we have to get rid of it. Let it sink in, let it take over every inch of your body, complete its course and then gradually and slowly it will start fading away. But when you impede the process of grief, it gets stuck to your core and like an unfinished book, it takes over your mind and never lets you go. This gives birth to the unconscious trauma that stays in your subconscious mind and it appears whenever you face any situation that gives you a glimpse of that traumatic event that you have dealt with in the past. Just like the sound of any monitor beeping takes you back to the beep of the ventilator machine.
Conventionally grief is focused upon only as an emotional response to an unfortunate event, but if we hinder its toll it can take form of a physical response such as suicide or any form of violent physical self-harm, which comes as an outburst of the hidden trauma that we have carried inside us for so long. The physical implications of trauma not only appear as self-harm, it often makes people violent towards others and even to people closer to them. It further gives birth to negative emotional thoughts and feelings such as envy, jealousy, rebellion, hatred, disbelief, that the person experiencing it is unknown of and is doing unintentionally. Other than that it also has bodily side effects such as inflammation, loss of appetite, fluctuations in blood pressure and even formation of blood clots which is a very dangerous scenario. It batters the immune system which leaves you vulnerable to any infection that your body encounters. The deadliest effect of grief and trauma is the persistent feelings of worthlessness that destroys the willpower to live and function as a normal independent individual.
“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it,” said Arthur Golden. So the next time you see someone grieving, do not tell them to let it go and move out of it, do not be judgmental and give them time to heal and let the process complete itself. What you can do for them is to sit with them and let them talk and if they don’t want to talk just be there and show them that you are there for them by their side and give them hope and a reason to love and live.
The writer is currently teaching and has an interest in literature