Some days are good.
Some days are hard.
Some days are fine.
Some days are really, really hard.
Over the last 4 months, I've met a number of people who've lost loved ones.
I've asked a lot of them this question: "Does it get better? Does it get easier?"
Responses have been different shades of a common theme.
"No, it doesn't. But what happens is, you learn to live with it."
"You'll think you're finally fine, and then the wind hits your face in a very specific way, and suddenly you're papers."
"You're going to grieve different things at different times. It may be that you can't touch him now, it may be that you're eating a meal you once enjoyed together. It'll be a different thing almost every time."
"The triggers are the tricky part. You just don't know when it'll strike, and you can't always be ready for it either."
"Sometimes you'll want the comforting sound of their laugh. Sometimes you'll remember the sound of their laugh and start laughing. You just have to live with all of it."
"Sometimes you'll ask yourself if anything could've been different. And of course, anything could've been different. But someday, I hope, how he lived will cross your mind, and you'll be happy that you got to spend the time you had with him."
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross once wrote a book, "On Death and Dying".
It's a book that was riotously successful - so massive was its impact that you are likely very familiar with a theory she laid out in it: The 5 stages of grief.
You know the ones. Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance.
We often think about the grieving process in that exact sequence: That we reject reality. Then the frustration and fury check in. Then the morality and existential debates. Then starting to wonder what the point of anything is. Then... Peace.
Yet it really isn't a straight line, is it?
There are things that happen in the midst of grief that are hardly ever talked about.
Like the brain fog.
You feel out of place. Like you really don't belong here. Like a helium balloon desperate to escape into the dark void of the night sky, held down only by a silly piece of string.
Yet the silly piece of string is tied around a rock. And you feel the weight of that rock in the pit of your stomach. All you want to do is escape, but this weight simply refuses to budge, weighing you down. And that rock is at the edge of a cliff - one small nudge, and it's all the way down into the unforgiving waters below.
Two things pulling in opposite directions, leading you to wonder if there's really a place for you here as everyone else goes about their business as usual.
Lost. Disoriented. Barely able to even recognise your very self.
The memory loss doesn't help things either. I've been struggling with everyday things. Conversations that I don't remember. Tasks I forget about. Assignments that constantly slip my mind. I even have a rule for myself now: It has to be written down, or else it shan't happen. Out of sight, out of mind. Literally.
Even the things I'd typically do effortlessly are now a battle. Writing has been something I've never had to struggle with - now it's a colossal task to string words together cohesively. Heck, this is the longest thing I've written since putting together his eulogy.
Life just feels harder. And it feels like my brain wants to call an extended time-out.
Grief rewires the brain, as I've come to learn.
A more accurate way to phrase it, perhaps, is this: The brain rewires itself in response to grief. To protect itself, and to protect us. Because grief can be... well, it can be a lot.
So it shuts some things down. So that we don't feel some things as intensely as they demand to be felt. Losing someone we love fundamentally changes what life is for us. And that level of grief takes up a lot of bandwidth. So the brain has to press pause on a few things, simply to allow us to survive the moment.
And that moment isn't a short moment.
So we start to forget stuff.
We struggle with the "simple" stuff.
Despite our best efforts, we just can't seem to clear the fog, however desperately we try. And yet time just... It just keeps moving.
The next battle then becomes trying not to feel like we're failing at life itself, if even the simple things are so massively overwhelming.
Then it's a spiral.
It's never too far off, that spiral.
Every day is a fresh attempt to establish some sense of rhythm.
A fresh attempt to remember the things I'm good at, and remind myself how to do them. Especially in the fog.
Some days are good.
Some days are hard.
Some days are fine.
Some days are really, really hard.
But grief is a thing that demands to be felt. It makes its presence known, even in the most inopportune of circumstances. It's just that rude.
And it's really, truly, not a straight line.
