Grief and Pain

Grief and pain are funny things.

Science tells us that there are five stages of grief.  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are the most commonly discussed stages of grief.  Most of us think about this occurring when there has been the death of someone close to us.  But the reality is that death is not the only thing that causes grief.  And unfortunately, grief is not also as cleanly disposed of as those five stages would make it appear to be.  The question is are you cycling through multiple grief events or do the five stages not follow the rules?  Is it possible they bounce around and you can bounce in and out of them? 

Pain is an interesting thing as well. It is meant to protect us.  When you touch a hot stove, it should hurt.  And we should learn not to touch it again.  What about when our bodies have something amiss like arthritis?  There is always some pain present.  While we may adjust to it that low level pain is always there and sometimes it rises up and reminds us of its presence.  And no matter how much we like to believe it is not affecting our day-to-day activities it is, just because it is there, always lurking below the surface.

Have you ever lost a relationship that was a center point of your life?  Maybe a marriage.  Or a child, or a parent, or a sibling relationship.  There are always domino effects to other relationships.  Did this rock your world so much that you question everything in your life?  Do you wonder how you could have been so wrong to believe that you had something you didn’t and wonder if you will ever recover?  This is when I learned that the five stages of grief weren’t all that I had believed them to be.  You don’t move from one to the next until you reach this peaceful state of acceptance.  You bounce around between them feeling like the ball in a pinball machine each time it is hit by the plunger to start a new round only to learn the flippers pack a pretty mean punch as well. 

As you realize one day that you are not ok, that acceptance has not really allowed you to find peace maybe you also reach the analogy that I did.  I know what it is like to live with chronic physical pain.  Everyday I get up and smile and believe I will not let pain get the best of me.  And luckily, I am not at a place that this is true.  But I do still have flare ups and then every movement is hard, I do not sleep, and I find my crabbiness being harder to contain.

Grief can feel like this.  But with grief it is the hole I feel in my soul, it is a physical pain near my heart.  I think I am ok and then it hits me like a train and the hole in my soul gushes wide open again.  I question how I will ever heal, how I will ever be ok again.

I had this conversation with a young woman that I admire greatly earlier this week.  I know she is having some family and home life issues.  I checked in on how she is doing.  She told me she appreciated that.  She said she knows everyone has problems they are dealing with so she tried to push hers down and come in to work with a positive attitude.  I told her I thought I understood how she feels and gave her my above analogy.  She told me that made her want to cry because that is exactly how it feels to her.  I saw us bond in that moment.  Not so much because we realized we weren’t alone but because I described her pain and we both understood and knew intimately what the other was feeling. I still don’t know how to fill the chasm in my chest.  But maybe it will help me offer some comfort to others.  Maybe it will help me accept comfort from others.  Someday the scar tissue will fill the gap and maybe I will be stronger because of it. Scar tissue may be stronger than the original tissue but it is changed and usually harder and less flexible than the original tissue.  There is no return to the original so now we must learn to function with the scar.