by Rachel Stewart

Someone you know, someone you will know, or you, will be caught up and flailing in the net of deep-sea grief – if you haven’t been there already. And now it’s my turn.

Over the last nearly five months I have been travelling back and forth between the various stages of grief. I’ve lost something important to me, and with that loss comes a flood of emotions that are sometimes hard to contain.

I am moody, angry, sad, depressed, confused, fearful and tearful on a daily basis, and sometimes all of those things in the last five minutes. The only relief I currently get is when I’m asleep.

Of course, I’m not alone with these feelings. Being human means life carries the risk of loss at every turn. Most of us experience grief at some stage but, until this event, I didn’t know how far to the bottom of the well one could feasibly go. And don’t get me started on a resurgence of unhealed childhood wounds you never knew were so close to the bone.

And, if you’re interested, here’s what I’ve learned about grief, and particularly about what not to say or do to someone in the depths of it.

If it’s a death, people will support you for much longer and with more focused intention, which is great. If it’s the death of a relationship it appears that people have a definite time limit on tolerance, which is not so great.

But here’s the thing. Telling someone in either scenario to “move on” is unhelpful. Grief runs on its own timeline, and the griever is acutely aware the minute the other’s patience is wearing thin. They think it’s a matter of taking control and hardening up, while you’re barely able to trudge through the mud of another day.

Which all adds another layer. Feeling like a burden. Stuffing down feelings. Self-isolating because being around others becomes more stressful than comforting. Just what you need when you’re already on the edge, and you’re half hoping that your car suddenly goes over it.

The anger part of grief is particularly tricky. If your thus far loyal supporters are uncomfortable with your anger, that’s when the friction kicks in. And, boy, hasn’t anger been given a bad rap over the last few decades. It’s like polite society sees it as the plague – or Covid – and wants rid as fast as humanly possible.

But losing a sense of safety and predictability overnight plunges people into headlong survival mode. Anger has a place there and forgetting that fact helps nobody. In fact, it only hinders.

I’m here to tell you that anger – which is really just pain’s bodyguard – can be healthy, motivating, and cathartic and should be welcomed by all, especially if you’ve spent some time on your knees.

Losing control is never advisable but it mostly shows itself in those fleeting moments of finding yourself once again amongst all of the perceived injustice, unfairness, shock, and insecurity you’ve been thrust into. No amount of trying to jolly the griever along is going to shake that one off.

I’ve always been a ‘tough love’ kind of gal. If I could just shake it off like a dog shakes off water, I would. In a heartbeat. And I totally get the increasing frustration of some my friends. They know that the way I feel I’ve been treated during this separation should see me fervently despise my ex with the heat of a thousand suns.

But it always takes a while for the heart to catch up with the head. So I’m sure I’ll get there, and in the meantime attempts by anybody to hurry me up are not going well. It was twenty-five years, goddam it! My grief process is barely out the gate.

And I want to do it right. I don’t want to be sitting around in ten or twenty years still feeling enormous sadness over losing the love of my life. I’ve seen people close to me do that. It’s not pretty – for them or for their significant others.

I also know that to do it right I have to face it and try not to run away from the pain – which is where most of the stuck sensations come from. But let me also say that allowing that searing pain to rip through me is the hardest thing to do; while also knowing that avoiding it only makes the grief stick around much longer. It’s a double-edged sword.

World-renowned grief expert David Kessler speaks of this here.

Humans are not machines, although some do approach grief like a robot. They will distract themselves, endlessly socialise, make lists, climb mountains, ford streams, follow every byway, and generally carry on as if nothing has happened. David Kessler calls these people ‘practical grievers’, and by God they can piss people off.

So, if there’s someone in your life hurting like I am, my advice? Have compassion and patience and remember that their healing will probably take far longer than you think it should.

Let them know you’re there for them for the long haul. Keep showing up. Don’t make it about you, try not to judge, and certainly don’t tell them to “move on”.

If we could do that, we would have done it by now. Because trust me when I tell you, this is not a fun place to be. But here we are.

And there but for the grace of God go I.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun here.