Monday, February 8, 2016

Letter to God - Years of Grief

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.

Denial: This one popped up many times in the 11 years Shannon had cancer.  In the midst of chemo
we’d talk about retirement.  While on the one hand we realized that we couldn’t focus on cancer 24/7, we had many times when we didn’t want to admit that the cancer might someday win.  We pretended everything was fine.

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.