“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” - Thomas Campbell
Grief is a tricky emotion.
It can follow you around like a dark cloud, turning your world to gray and obscuring everything around you. And just when you think the fog of your grief may be lifting, a random thought or memory can trigger a sense of overwhelming sadness all over again.
Whether you are dealing with the loss of a loved one or grieving your former self due to chronic illness or cancer— we all grieve in different ways.
Recently, Twitter user Lauren Herschel shared an analogy that explains how grief changes over time and why it often bubbles up randomly.
Herschel drew a box with a ball inside. On the left side of the box is a red “button.” She explained that “When grief is new, the ball takes up most of the box and is constantly hitting the button, which causes pain, over and over again.”
The pain is fairly constant in the beginning. “Because the ball is huge, you can’t move the box without the ball hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over. You can’t control it – it just keeps hurting. Sometimes it seems unrelenting.”
Herschel explains, “Over time, the ball shrinks — but every now and then, it still hits the button. Maybe you see someone who reminds you of your loved one. Maybe a certain song plays on the radio. Maybe it comes out of nowhere.”
One of the hardest parts about dealing with grief is accepting the fact that the feeling never really goes away. The feelings may lessen in intensity, but the sense of loss is always there. Herschel goes on to explain, “For most people, the ball never really goes away. It might hit less and less, giving you more time to recover between hits, unlike when the ball was still giant-sized.”
There is no timetable for dealing with your grief. It can take time for the ball in your box to shrink. You shouldn’t feel rushed into getting “over” your grief, and you definitely shouldn’t feel judged for grieving, no matter how long ago it started.
I’ve learned that immense grief is often the price we pay for tremendous love. Grief comes in waves. Sometimes our emotions are calm, other times the waves of loss bring us to our knees. All we can do is learn how to ride the waves of emotion.
There is no moving on after loss, there is only moving forward.
The reality is that we don’t forget, move on, and have closure. Instead, we honor, we remember, and learn to celebrate in a new way.
“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. ”
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