I’ve heard people refer to the kind of grief that rattles the mind, that breaks the heart in two, that makes you question the reality you thought you were living in. I’ve heard people talk about it, but I never experienced it myself, not in a conscious way…
…until now.
Now I know what "those people” are talking about. I know the physical pain in the center of the chest. I know the sense of being shattered into a thousand pieces. I know the confusion of looking out the same window, seeing the same sights, and yet nothing looks the same. I am those people.
Oh Lord! When my mind goes to trying to make sense of things, like any good analyzer will do, then the craziness really explodes! Did I really experience that? Is anything I thought to be true, really true? What does 2+2 equal, now?
Many of you are aware that my Dad passed away in the middle of October (2019). He died after a 7 + year ride with Alzheimer’s, the last 3 of which he was virtually unable to communicate. As sad as it is to not have him on this earthly plane with us, his death is a release for him, and for those of us who love him. In addition, Dad has not been a part of my daily life for many, many years. His death, for me, is not mind blowing, or ego-shattering.
The same week, though, as many events and streams of energy lined up, my significant relationship began to completely and totally unravel. In ways that, through all of our challenges and previous separations, were utterly shocking. (You may read here “infidelity,” but I could have handled that.)
I don’t write this in any way to expose, blame, or denigrate this person in any way. I love him.
I write because it’s my current reality. Because I now have an understanding of what that earth-breaking-apart grief feels like. And because I think it deserves some words. Even though words will only partially express it. (Wailing and screaming are a little closer to the essence of it!)
And I write because I recognize the lack of rituals and loving, supportive containers that we have for such experiences. Even when we are experiencing the physical death of a loved one, have the wake, the obituary and the funeral, we don’t tend to talk about the more primal emotional and mental anguish.
Oh my! What about the children who experience sudden loss of a parent or sibling?? In a culture of hiding intense emotion! My mother is among many people I know closely who have experienced this agonizing loss! And whose emotions and life-shattering experience were completely ignored and overlooked.
With the death of a relationship, especially one without the communal container of marriage, we are totally left hanging! Even when folks get divorced, there’s not too many healing or spiritual rituals beyond going to a support group or getting on a dating website!
With Dad, we got to come from our different parts of the country, have prayers and a worship service, tell stories and celebrate his life. Not so, when a relationship dies! We feel broken, ashamed, unsettled, lost. With no sacred container to hold us.
There’s still the loss though. The smells, the touches. The shared meals and shared sense of humor. The deep conversations and the conversations about nothing. The arguments. The sound of a voice. The emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical ache.
Yes, there are circumstances and dynamics. There are reasons. There even may be a little freedom and relief. There is all kinds of inner child healing going on, let me tell you. But it doesn’t change the heartbreak and the loss. There was genuine connection, love, intimacy, friendship. We went to a part heaven, and then some of hell together. It creates this juxtaposition that I can’t make work in my mind. No sense is made. In that place, all the reasons in the world, and all of the gifts that are going to come out of it, make it “right.” Even when some part of me knows that it must be. Because it IS .
Oh, and there is that little thing of me being a therapist and a Spiritual Director. I clearly don’t have my relationship shit together! I’ve been having a show down with God too! The shame! There’s enough of that for it’s own separate article, I can assure you!
I know enough to see that the degree of my ego-disintegrating grief in the loss of this treasured relationship runs way more deep in me than the current situation. It most definitely contains within it the unexpressed grief of my mother’s traumatic loss in her childhood. And occasions of the loss of my own power in my early childhood. And the remnants of other losses.
I’m exploring all of that, and hope to share it with you as the journey unfolds.
So here I am, with my open heart, the bleeding mostly stopped. It’s been undergoing intensive surgery, of which the heart-break of break-up is just one phase. No longer in the grips of the intense pain, I can put these words together. Make no mistake - I am still grieving. I miss my guy like nobody’s business!
But I am coming out of the cage with it. I will continue to share. I offer gratitude for your attention. And healing for the grief you may find yourself walking through. I know it may feel like you are drowning sometimes! You are not alone. And neither am I!