Grief Is Grief…Until It Isn’t

I miss the little things. Like, a touch, a smile, or a shared inside joke. And, the big things. Like my identity, his guidance, and my purpose.

There’s not one aspect of my life that hasn’t been affected by grief. It’s like spaghetti on a plate: it touches everything. If you’ve ever grieved someone you loved dearly, then you get it. Especially, if you lived with that person or took care of that person. Your life was built around that someone special and there are very few things that haven’t been affected by their death.

Maybe it was a child, a parent, a grandmother or other relative. Or, like me, it was your spouse.

I lost my parents (51 days apart) in 2013. My loss was less intense than when I lost my husband. Of course I was sad, I was distraught, I was grieving, and there was so much paperwork. But, I didn’t live with them. They weren’t part of my daily life. I didn’t have to be reminded of them every time I walked into the closet and saw their favorite shirt, or climbed into a half-empty bed. And, I had my support system, most notably my husband, to help me navigate it all.

Maybe you’ve lost a parent, but the experience was different for you. They lived with you or in a facility, and you were a caretaker or a helper, so their loss was not only grief for you, but loss of a purpose and a ‘job’.

Maybe you lost a child and you lost your sense of identity, your purpose, your reason for getting up in the morning. You lost their entire future and promise of a life fulfilled and perhaps grandchildren. How devastating.

Maybe you lost people back to back. You didn’t even have time to grieve one when another went away.

Or, maybe, you became a widow or widower at a young age, maybe with small children, and you not only have to navigate changing your entire life and figuring out what the next 50 years will look like, but helping your kids grieve and grow up without a parent. Being a single parent of young ones is hard enough, but add grief on top of it, and it must truly be the hardest job in the world.

People say we can’t rank grief, and they’re right. Grief is grief. But, having lost my dear friend to suicide, my cousin to AIDS, my mom to Alzheimer’s, my dad to COPD, and my husband to COVID, I can say that there are different aspects of that grief that affect our lives differently.

When you lose someone you’ve created a life with, it IS different. Just as losing a child is different. Just as losing a parent who you’ve been taking care of is different.

When I lost my parents, I didn’t have to remind myself to take a shower and brush my teeth. I didn’t have heart palpitations that required prescription medication. I didn’t have to remember to make only two cups of coffee in the morning, not four. I didn’t have to scramble for passwords to pay the mortgage and the electric bill. I didn’t have to worry about when the life insurance payment would hit the bank so I could buy groceries.

Different losses affect us differently. Grief is grief…until it isn’t.

Ordering a marker with not only your beloved’s name on it, but yours as well is an other worldly experience.

Watching a stranger drive off in your beloved’s truck, that he named, is jarring.

I can’t fathom how hard these things are as a parent who lost a child. To see your little one’s name on a marker. To figure out what to do with the baby bottles, or toys, or vehicle, or apartment…it must be a nightmare.

Yes, we all grieve. We all hurt. Yes, I’m not advocating for levels of grief. There aren’t any.

But, what I do know, is that the LOSS is different. And, the effect of that loss on someone’s daily life should NOT be discounted when we minister to those who grieve.