Dear God,
Recently I’ve felt like I’ve been doing it wrong. I thought grief should be overwhelming,
crushing, hard to handle. I thought I would
have sleepless nights of tears and thoughts of Shannon creeping in at all hours
of the day. I assumed that just hearing
her name or holding a thought of her would send me into new waves of grief.
That hasn’t been the case.
God, I’ve felt guilty for it.
Other people who are grieving seem to have such a hard time. What’s my deal? Am I just in a state of complete denial? Am I so afraid of the pain of grief that I
refuse to deal with it? God, I’m having
a lot of fun in life. Somehow that has
seemed a bit wrong.
God, these questions prompted me to go back to the counselor
that I have seen for quite a few years.
He’s served as a sounding board, helping me to process Shannon’s
illness. As I explained my ‘lack of
grief’ to him, wondering why I didn’t feel lousy, he said something I will never
forget.
“Pete, you’ve been grieving for a long time, long before
Shannon even went on hospice. Bit by bit
you grieved the loss of the relationship you and Shannon had. The moment she died wasn’t the moment grief
started for you.”
So simple…yet so profound.
God, thank you for putting those words in his mouth. They were what I
needed to hear. In assuming that grief
started at death I totally failed to see how long I’ve been on this journey.
This morning I dusted off Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of
grief (a blast from the past in my psychology major days). In them I can see my own history.
Anger: God, you’ve taken the brunt of this one! In moments of frustration I’ve resonated with
the lament Psalms, the ones where people lash out at You. The ‘Why
me??’ question did come up from time to time.
While for the most part I accepted the course that cancer took, I surely
didn’t avoid anger!!
Bargaining: I’m not
so sure on this one. There aren’t many
bargains which will make cancer go away.
If I could have made a bargain…I would have!
Depression: Yes, yes,
a thousand times yes! This is what drove
me to the counselor years ago. Little
things would get to me and send me into a spiral. I had days when I knew I was a useless
failure. Very fringe thoughts of ending
it all came to mind (and thankfully were quickly rejected). The feelings of depression came and went, but
when they came life really stunk. They
came much more often than I wanted (though I hid it well)!
Acceptance: God, I had moments in this stage well before
Shannon even went on hospice. I could
see her body failing. I knew her chemo
options had become limited. She just
couldn’t go on like that forever, so I started preparing for her to die. That hurt.
Shannon couldn’t bring herself to talk about it much, feeling that
admitting that the cancer might take her life might possibly weaken her resolve
to fight it. For me sometimes the
acceptance cycled back to depression.
The beauty of hospice was that Shannon and I could come to acceptance
together.
God, I needed this.
While I keep hearing, “Everyone grieves differently,’ it didn’t stop me
from feeling like I failed in grief.
Through my counselor you have opened a new door for me: a door of
hope. I’ve been grieving for a very long
time. Perhaps the joy I feel in life isn’t
a result of denial. Perhaps it comes
because I have intentionally processed my feelings, I’ve sought counseling, I’ve
been made sure that Shannon is not forgotten in my life. Perhaps my ‘sudden’ return to feeling great isn’t
so sudden after all. I’ve walked the
path of grief for twelve years, not four months.
God, thank you for the clarity.