Gifts of Grief

"Loss is often a muse.  Loss is often a motivating force...Loss also compels us to throw a lariat of love around our family and friends and appreciate more fully the precious time spent together."

--Jill Brooke, Don't Let Death Ruin Your Life: A Practical guide to Reclaiming Happiness After the Death of a Loved One, page 10

I like that image--"throw a lariat of love around our family and friends."  I must confess, however, that I have to wrestle constantly with wanting to turn that lariat into a straitjacket.  I get anxious at farewells, even for the day.  I loathe the idea of spending nights apart from Brenda.  I reject that possibility so strongly that sometimes I have a physical and visceral reaction when I need to think about such separation.

I awaken in the middle of the night wondering if kids, granddaughter, friends and colleagues are all right.  I'm not a big one for remembering dreams, but I do remember the nightmares of loss and death connected to those I love.  I remember many more of those now than I once did.

It does indeed help to allow loss to be the "muse" as I express these experiences.  It does help to say it out loud.  I know intellectually that I am over-sensitized now to the potential for loss.  I know intellectually that this will continue to abate somewhat over time.  I know intellectually that it is also likely to be a feature of my emotional landscape to some degree until I die.

I also know that my fears are exaggerated, and that such exaggeration is quite normal.  Psychological explanations help somewhat.  I live with a certain variety of the Fundamental Attribution Error.  I know my experience from the "inside."  So every part of it is narcissistically magnified and multiplied.  Stimuli that might slip right past others seem huge to me--like Brenda leaving in a hurry for work.  I know that I have a heightened aversion to loss, but that such aversion is a normal part of the human condition.  I know that we all have a negativity bias, and that this bias has been enhanced to an unhelpful degree in my decisional architecture.

I am the poster child for the Pogo cartoon.  "We have met the enemy and he is us."

So I think and feel my way through the fears with great energy and many backward steps.  I find helpful some words from the book, Out of Character (David DeSteno and PierCarlo Valdesolo, page 202):

"Our decisions and behaviors are guided in large part by what our minds and circumstances trick us into believing about relative risks and rewards.  Add to this the fact that our estimations of risks and rewards not only are very frequently flawed but are also quite fluid, and the mechanisms shaping character quickly become more complex.  Once we come to grips with these dueling forces and how they can sway us...then we can start making better decisions about when to gamble and when to play it safe."

At this moment, I feel grateful for the challenge.  Autopilot unconsciousness is not an option for me most of the time.  Is it any wonder that I've never felt more tired...and more alive?  I feel more flawed, vulnerable, weak and uncertain than ever before.  And I have a clearer sense of daily vocation than at any other point in my life.  I fret about those I love to the verge of anxious unmanageability.  And I have never before engaged life and love, joy and hope with deeper passion.  I have never dealt with fear and anxiety as closer companions.  And I have never felt more courage.

These are some of the long-term gifts of grief--after the pain is past and as the future unfolds.