I read a very good opinion piece in the NY Times today (It’s OK to Never Get Over Your Grief, by Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode, Nov. 25, 2023) which said some of the things I already believed, but pointed out some other truths about grief that resonated with me.
I already knew you don’t actually ‘get over’ grief. I knew it as a child from my mother, who lost her seven-year-old child in an accident. She recreated her life after that tragedy the best she could, but she was changed. It was a new normal for her. Later I knew it first hand when my parents passed, and I realized I was no one’s little girl anymore. As I get older, the passing of friends changes my reality in different ways. We see ourselves in the eyes of our friends. It’s part of our own identity. As someone who has grappled with the identity thing throughout my life, maybe it feels more like losing another piece of myself than others may experience. Sooner or later though, we all come to this experience of loss.
As Slawkowski-Rode explains in his piece, and I found in my own research for my books, prolonged grief was looked on as an illness by Sigmund Freud and in his time. Looking at grieving and mourning as evidence of psychological illness has resulted in our urging people to move on quickly from grief. As if we could. I look at the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva, with family congregating for eight days after a death, differently than I did as a child. Then, I thought it was dreary, boring and unnecessary. I was anxious to get out of that house of mourning when relatives died. No one I know does this anymore. Now I wish I had that longer ritual to come together and remember those we lose with stories of our relationships with that person who was so much a part of our lives in different ways.
For me, I am grateful to carry some of my grief with me for the people I have loved who are now gone. I don’t want to fully forget them, how they saw the world, and how they saw me. I’ll keep them with me, thank you very much. I’ll recall what my mother used to say if I told her I had a new idea (“treat it kindly, it’s in a strange place”) and remember my father insisting on leaving me with a joke on every phone call, and my sister’s pursuit of joy in her difficult life. Of friends, I’ll keep the inspiration for creation of art of one, the understanding of this human condition from another, and the hilarious perspective of one who made me laugh out loud to the point of tears. I am richer for having them still with me in my heart. That’s my good grief. Maybe Charlie Brown had it right all this time!