Grief on grief

I was ridiculously lucky to get to 28 years old without experiencing close-family grief. Age 21 I lost a best friend, which was a truly horrendous experience, and I thought I knew grief somewhat. In hindsight, I had no real idea of grief at all. Every grief is completely different.

What I did not anticipate was the experience of double loss. Double intense loss. Does that mean you get all your grief out in one go? No. It means you grieve twice as hard and it becomes messy and confusing.

In November 2022 I lost my Granda. He passed away after suffering years of chronic illness. We anticipated his death for many years, but it was still so shocking in the end. Three weeks later his wife, my Grandma, passed away. She had not been unwell aside from an acute period a week before her death. Her death was incredibly shocking.

It’s not lost on me that people are losing loved ones every moment of every day in horrendous ways. Grief is a universal experience. But, comparison is futile because the experience of human suffering is relative. Suffering is suffering no matter how comparable to the next person’s suffering.

Naturally, people try to understand your experience in their own worldview. Their own dynamic with their own grandparents, for example. How they expect they would feel, or how they did feel when it happened to them. I really do believe noone can truly know your grief but they can sometimes relate. Everyone experiences it differently.

For me it felt a million miles from what I expected. I feel everything and nothing all at once. It’s physical and it’s emotional. Sometimes I think but most of the time I suppress. I want people to ask how I am and yet I have nothing to say back. It is the weirdest experience of my life.

I noticed a distanct difference in how I was able to process my Granda’s death compared to my Grandma’s. After my Granda it felt a safe and natural process of feeling what needed to be felt, allowing the sadness and just sitting with it. I cried, and the crying helped. I sometimes did nothing and felt OK with it.

After my Grandma’s death it felt totally different. It was more of an urgency, a trauma, a deep unadulterated shock and a sense of being wired. Not being able to switch off the ‘on’ button. Not being able to let go. Not being able to feel.

I think the nature and timing of someone’s death has a massive impact on how loved ones are able to process and grieve. The layering of the two deaths, for me, created a ‘survival’ effect on my processing. It didn’t feel as natural anymore and felt more like something was stuck. Sometimes highly anxious, sometimes nothing at all. The first month was just pure numbness - ‘the motions’ as people put it.

It is only in recent weeks that I have started to feel just a tiny bit more. Numb is still the primary, but I notice the pain showing it’s face more and more. There have been acute moments of intensity that seem to have temporarily ‘unblocked’ me somewhat. I burst out crying at an (attempted) bikini wax. I cried at a Disneyland parade. I cried seeing someone’s grandmother meet their new baby because I won’t ever get that with my grandparents. I even nearly cried watching a tv show which is a new one for me. I don’t cry easily so this all feels quite alien.

The unblocking feels freeing but incredibly painful in equal measure because now I remember. I remember them and why this is bad. I’m connecting what has happened to my actual feelings. I see them more clearly in my mind’s eye again. Still not clear enough. I hate how grief makes your memories cloudy. I imagine it’s the brain trying to protect you from pain but it makes them feel hazy and they are not hazy, they are real and were real.

People are amazing. I never stop being amazed by the kindness of my friends, family, colleagues and complete strangers. Amongst all the shit in the world there are also millions of moments of pure love and human compassion and that is what makes life worth living. Grief and death is a shared and unavoidable part of the human experience. Something we can all relate to.

I don’t know what is to come in months and years to come on the grief train journey. I’m unsure if there are really stages to grief and more a mess of feelings and thoughts and attempts to survive that change every day. I guess i’ll find out. Thank you to every single person who has been kind to me, patient with me and who has listened. Those are the most valuable things you can give another person: time and a listening ear.