Grief

Maybe it was Leo the cat being put down, or Memorial Day teasing my subconscious. Or maybe it was selecting photos of Aaron and Merijane for the UCSF Meri Center Day of Remembrance, but I found myself reflecting on lost friends and family, lingering over photos and memories. Feeling the losses more consciously and poignantly than usual.

Although bereavement circles commonly refer to “unresolved” grief, I don’t really believe there is such a thing as “resolved” grief, unless by that they mean when it shifts from a punch-in-the-gut anguish, a sharp, painful sense of heartbreak and despair into a more livable, ongoing and integrated sadness. The transformation of intense sorrow into a recurring, tender twinge. 

Doing grief counseling at Marin Suicide Prevention, most of my clients had endured a relatively recent loss. Someone they cared about had died, usually three to four months earlier. For the first month or two, they had active support. But by the second or third month, the supporters were moving on, leaving the mourners very much alone. And this is when their new daily reality really hit them, and when they generally sought help from us. 

Mostly they were not yet ready to stop rehearsing the story of their loss, and others were now tired of hearing about it. They needed their own timeframe and a neutral ear that could maintain receptive, positive regard without getting bored or interrupting the story. And because of my own losses, I was not afraid to hear about death. I could be that ear.

The biggest loss in my life, of course, was our infant son Aaron. He was only 3½ months old, and I was only 33. I was nursing him at the time and it took awhile for my milk to dry up. So in the beginning, I had the constant reminder of hard painful breasts in addition to the anguish in my heart and in my belly and in my aching arms. 

Most of our local friends were just starting their own families, and our situation must have been terrifying — during the weeks and months after the funeral, no one called, no one showed up to visit, no one brought food. There were no support groups in 1980 as there are today, and therapists were no help. They are not trained to simply hold a space for grief to express itself, so they either pathologized it or were so impressed with “how well I was doing.” Naturally (which I guess means as Nature would have it), over time the pain eased and I moved on.

But for the last 40 years, every April I would find myself becoming wistful and a bit forlorn, and couldn’t understand why. And then I would suddenly remember that the anniversary of Aaron’s death was approaching. It may sound odd, but it took me years of repeating the same experience before I learned to recognize the signs. My theory is that the body memory of the day he died is so strongly embedded, the time of year, the light, the length of the days, that, though my conscious mind was not even aware of it, my body always knew when April 17 was coming up.

It took a few years of grieving Aaron for the transformation from gut-clenching nausea and heartache to a more gentle kind of sorrow. And from that journey I learned how I grieve and how to be comfortable talking and hearing about pain and death and dying. I learned a kind of empathy and compassion I had not known as a younger woman.

So on this Memorial Day weekend, I’ve been thinking about Aaron and Merijane, about Carol and Leo and Bob, about my mom and dad and grandmothers. I’ve been savoring the memories, the gratitude for having had them in my life, and the sweet nostalgic sense of missing them, my current flavor of grief.