The Budding of Grief

 Hi lovelies, a lot has happened since the last time I came here, and for a while, I thought about stopping entirely. I felt I had lost touch with my love for stringing words together. My dad was a huge inspiration for my writing, he passed a couple of months back and I am yet to intentionally come to terms with it.

In the past seven years, I have lost the loves of my life, a partner, a grandma, and a father. I feel like a soldier on sentry who has seen, inadvertently so, that doom is brewing but cannot leave the station and all lines are cut from the central. Most of the time, I sit in isolation, and I look for the next project to take on. I look for where to expend myself. I feel like I’m being watched, I feign indifference, I try to move on but, let me explain something to you, today, grief has a different character arch for different people. I know this from experience. Grief gives people a different perspective on life and while you might have suffered a similar loss, grief is customized. 

Yes, you know the different stages of grief, you are abreast with the signs of the different stages, good for you but if you do not walk in a person’s shoe, you can never pinpoint the exact spot of the pain or itch, you can assume, or infer from their actions, inactions, or reactions but you can never know exactly where the hurt or discomfort stems from. Don't presume to understand.

When my partner died it felt like a rude awakening, I was kept on suicide watch, and the world plummelled into darkness. People were kinder because he was my first love, and he was young and they were scared that I would not be able to move on, so I was always surrounded, advised to go out, to mingle. When my grandma died, the world didn't stop, people said things like, “It should be a celebration of life, she was old, nau, are you mourning when you should be thanking God for a life well-lived?” When my dad passed… the thing is, there are different reactions to different losses, and while grief isn't only about death, this post is centered on the grief that comes from losing a loved one.

When Fay passed, I was angry, at the world, at his family, at the doctors. It was the same feeling of anger I felt when my dad died. I was angry at the medical system, at my dad for being careless with his health, and at myself, as I felt I could have been a better child. When my grandma passed, I felt nothing. A great filling-emptiness. A numbness that washed throughout my body until one day, I fell asleep and all I did in my dream was scream until my voice was hoarse. I woke up with a sore throat and a fever. Every time I tried to speak about the feelings I had, I was met with you should have moved on already, so I shut down and buried myself in work. So when my dad passed, that was what I propped myself up to do, to drown in work but people wanted me to feel, to unearth emotions that they felt I buried. They wanted me to cry. To wail to be broken but I was used to the shutdown.

Grief is like a flower, at the denial stage, it takes root, stems shoot upwards, like moments of flaring up, unprovoked, a quick temper, or a refusal to address the loss. Then the leaves bud, and photosynthesis begins, a rush of guilt, all the feelings of how the last conversation you had with that person could have been longer or more meaningful. Then there's an overcompensating stage, where you try to be kinder, nicer, better to the people around you, you might suffocate them with prayers over them, with a need to be around them, with needless conversations. And then there's the flowering, the days you wake up and shrug your shoulders in realization that you will never receive a call from that person again. A shudder greets your spine when you go to places where that person should normally be and their absence greets you. A tear escapes your eyes when you see a semblance of them in people around or when someone speaks of them in past tense.  

Grief buds when you lose sleep, hide to cry in the bathroom, are grateful for solitude so you can rest from condolences, and when you finally can drop the act. The act of feigning strength to inspire others. The act of resisting help, professional or otherwise. The act of soliloquy. Because while grief might be customized, there is hope in the fact that you do not have to do it alone and there are people tailored to help you through it. In whatever stage of budding you find yourself in, be kind with and to yourself. 

P.S. If you know someone who's grieving do not assume or presume to know what they should look like, feel, or do. Be kind. Be sensitive. Extend grace, it’s the least you can do.