The inevitable consequence of love

Grief, trauma, COVID and sacred duty. It's a light week.

Dear Writer,

I drove 14 hours, there and back, to Tucson last week. I don’t hate flying, but there’s something about driving that gives me a chance to think and reflect. There’s nothing to do but be where I am and sit with myself, and I find it to be a meditative practice. And since I don’t meditate on regular days—it’s a goal, but I struggle—then road trips tend to be my source.

Going to Tucson to be there with my kids’ dad as his father died was a big thing. My father-in-law was a father to me, and while I was there with my kids’ dad, I was focused on getting him through this experience. It was his first parent to die, and I’d been through it with both of mine. The drive there and back, however, was about me. I cried for much of the way, so much that I had to stop and trade my contacts out for my glasses because they’d become too cloudy to see the road.

As I drove, I listened to Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, which maps out dozens of emotions in detail. It was a book that I knew I would buy as soon as it came out, because I buy all of Brené Brown’s books, but I didn’t realize how incredibly valuable it was until I was by myself, with no one’s emotions to attend to but my own.

In the book, Brown talks about how typically people can only name three emotions; mad, sad and glad. Obviously, there are many more emotions than that, and our ability to deal with our emotions is hampered if we can’t use language to name them and understand them. When she got to the chapter on grief, she talked about loss, longing and feeling lost, and how these are central concepts to grief. Grief never ends; as long as the lost thing is lost… and lost is often a permanent situation… our grief for it will continue.

My father-in-law’s impending death had me feeling a great deal of grief, but as I tried to examine that grief as Brown instructed, I realized it was also mixed with an intense gratitude.

Now, don't get me wrong; I am not that kind of person. When someone says, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened,” I want to punch them square in the face. I have absolutely no time for that kind of toxically positive foolishness. Things suck and things hurt and my father-in-law is one of the best people I’ve ever known and his loss is a big one, both to me personally and the world in general.

That said, mixed in with my grief was a gratitude so intense, I almost didn’t know what to do with it. This man had given me parental love when I had none. He’d given me my kids’ dad, who is precious to me, and because of my kids’ dad, he gave me my kids. He was brilliant and kind and funny and humble and loving and I’m so grateful that I got to be a part of his family. That gift is one I will never take lightly.

Grief is loss, but it’s not just loss. It’s a complicated mass of things that all originate with love. I’ve heard grief defined as “love that doesn’t have anywhere to go” and while that doesn’t feel quite right to me, as my love still goes to my father-in-law whether he’s here or not, it feels closer to the mark.

Grief is the inevitable consequence of love. Grief and love are partners in this game; you cannot have one without the other. If we did not love, we won’t grieve. When we love anyone or anything, the loss of that person, animal, precious object will cause some level of grief. It’s just how it is. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating, but also beautiful and meaningful.

The last six years or so have been so full of grief, both for me personally and for pretty much everyone. I’m not a big fan of sweeping statements, but COVID took from everyone. If it didn’t take someone you loved, it took your freedom to leave the house without calculating your risk of death. Maybe it took your job. Maybe you got it and recovered and you’re still not the same. Maybe you got it and recovered and are fine, but your sense of your own personal safety was threatened, and that results in some level of trauma.

Even for those of us who are seeing therapists regularly, processing all of this stuff takes time and energy that many of us just don’t have. We just keep going, dragging our traumatized minds and bodies through the day, wondering why we can’t do it the way we used to.

We can’t Because Trauma.

But here’s the thing; if you didn’t know about storytelling’s power to heal before this, you should now. If you weave grief and loss and trauma into a story, and someone who doesn’t have the resources—financial, emotional or otherwise—to process their trauma read your story, then your story has just healed them a little.

And if that isn’t enough reason to get writing, right now, then I don’t know what is.

I don’t care how silly or fluffy you think your work is, someone out there needs it. It’s a sacred calling and it matters, all of it. Humans are machines that create meaning, and stories are how we do it. We grow through meaning, we heal through meaning, and we need our storytellers.

So, when you can, get to writing. We need you.

Everything,

L