Here's what I most want you to know: this really is as bad as you think.
No matter what anyone else says, this sucks. What has happened cannot be made right. What is lost cannot be restored. There is no beauty here, inside this central fact.
Acknowledgement is everything.
You're in pain. It can't be made better.
The reality of grief is far different from what others see from the outside. There is pain in this world that you can't be cheered out of.
You don't need solutions. You don't need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hand while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life.
Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
—Megan Devine, from the first page of "It's OK that You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn't Understand." Find it wherever you get your books.
I needed to be handed these words crafted by Megan in my early moments of beginning a path that I had hoped and prayed I would never find myself on. Even if I could not contain them, I needed them to be there waiting for me when I could. I will never forget at my son’s celebration of life service, someone taking me by my shoulders and saying, “If ever I knew of someone who will find the gift in this, you will.” There was and is NO gift to be found in the physical loss of my son. These words were uttered I understand not to intentionally hurt, yet they pierced my weary and war torn heart and added another layer of confusion and guilt. Was my job now to try to find “a gift?”
What helped me the most and still does is for Douglas to be remembered. One does not have to have known him to ask about him. If tears come and sometimes they might, they were not caused by the one who asked as they are always just below the surface waiting to be released. A hug can often say what words cannot and if that is not possible, simply to say his name and ask for a memory to be shared becomes a healing balm for my heart. There is nothing that I love to do more than to speak of my son in the present tense and if it’s a day or moment that I don’t choose to, I will let you know and be so amazingly grateful to you that you asked. Don’t give up on me or anyone in loss and please circle back around.
The invitation is there for all to continue to reach out and to hold the space for ourselves and one another to show up just as we are. Our losses cannot be fixed, there is nothing to be solved and each of us will learn in our own unique ways how to carry them, because carrying is what we are doing. It is not a goal, nor a destination, yet becomes our path. What can happen is that we continue to show up for one another and perhaps ask, “How is your heart feeling?” ALL responses even if there is not one are acceptable and okay and are desiring to be acknowledged, listened to and held tenderly. This IS what healing looks and feels like.
Douglas with Jordan camping at the Grey's River in Wyoming.
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