GOOD GRIEF

This is a departure from my usual content; it’s not laced with the same optimism. It’s a little dark and mostly humourless, but when I started this venture I promised myself that I would be genuine with all of my emotions and every step of my journey as a mother. This may not have been a step that I anticipated or material I ever thought I would be sharing, but it’s part of my journey and writing it down is part of my process. My hope is that by sharing it, the commonality may offer someone else a little comfort. 

Grief is a fickle thing. If you swim too deep you could drown and if you try to dance around ignoring the edge of the pool, you risk falling in. Everyone’s process is a little different and no one does it perfectly. That’s maybe the most difficult part about it all; you can hear the sentiments from people who care about you and know their genuine intention, but at the end of the day you pick and choose the ones that you find a mild comfort in and dismiss the rest as a kind effort. Nothing really makes it all okay. The result of that is that even though everyone on this planet has in some way experienced or been connected to the experience of loss, you somehow feel like no one really gets what you’re going through. No one could possibly know this heartbreak. Regardless of the level of support you receive, there’s an element of it that still feels lonely. Sad and lonely are a tough mix. 

I feel this guilt because while this is a time that I’m sad, it’s synonymously one of the happiest times in my life. Grieving with a new baby has me stuck in a weird dance of feeling both heartbroken and like my heart is so full. Whenever we reach a milestone I’m overwhelmed with joy, but something in the back of my mind always stings. A reminder of all the things they’ll miss. One minute I feel okay and then suddenly not at all. It never really gets easier, time doesn’t actually heal anything, and the longing never lessens. It’s just that over time you have more okay moments than not. 

My grief always feels like a hypocrisy. At my core I’m a bit of an atheist, and then when someone dies I start praying I’m wrong so I can somehow see that person again. But because I don’t truly hold onto any particular faith, I can’t truly find comfort in a belief system that they’re “up there” relaxing on some cloud waiting to see us all again. So I’ve found myself repeatedly bumping into the wall of denial. My head can’t quite wrap itself around the finality of it all, and my heart doesn’t really ever want to. I’m not the only one who lost someone, so in this grief we’re all also trying to navigate how to heal one another. Each with our own processes and belief systems, and that’s probably the most comforting sensation of it all; the coming together.

I think the biggest mental block for me has been the question of what’s the point? What is life and love all about if we’re just going to leave it all behind. Nothing lasts forever, our deepest sorrows often come from the loss of our greatest loves. It’s the sign of a life well lived. Sure our memories and stories carry on through our loved ones but as the next generations continue to come in like waves, all those things eventually wash away too. I’m a logical thinker, and in this moment none of it makes any sense.

But maybe that’s the answer; no one can explain what happens when you die because no can really explain the meaning of life. It’s all this cosmic, immeasurable reality of our existence. Like what happens in the womb when a single cell becomes a life. Not just a life, but a soul. It’s an incomprehensible magic. In a strange way my inability to wrap my head around the point of it all comforts me because I know that even though I can’t logically grasp the concept of an afterlife, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

I don’t know the source to cite it, but I once heard of a theory derived from the Buddhist concept of life. It connected the idea of birth and death in a way that spoke to me as a new mother. A baby in the womb doesn’t know of it’s existence before or after; no living creature has ever been born and then returned to their womb. It only knows life as it is and therefore birth itself may seem like a death; scary, unknown, and an ending. Meanwhile, we on the outside would arguably say that the best is yet to come. Life and all it’s wonder. So it’s possible that the same thing happens in death; no living creature has ever died and then returned to this life to tell us what happens next.

One thing I do believe in, is energy. If you’re good, good things happen to you and I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. Maybe life itself is purgatory? We feel all the range of emotions, we’re tested, we’re given opportunity, we make choices. We’re given the greatest joys and burdened with the deepest sorrows. And in the end of this life as we know it, we die. But maybe, just maybe, the best is yet to come? I guess there’s a touch of optimism in this after all.

Children are the beginning of everything, the very start of all the wonder that we can’t explain. They’re proof magic exists, so maybe they bring us such joy because they remind us that it’s not foolish to hope in the magic of an afterlife. I plan to heal by leaning into the love that my babies fill my heart with. One thing is certain, we can’t do anything about any of it anyways, so we might as well enjoy it while it lasts and try our best to leave some good stories behind.