grief adolescence
I had a clear and memorable grief dream a few nights ago.
I’m at a home - family, friends, somewhere warm, safe. I’m going to bed, and my dad is going to sleep across the room, on his own mattress.
He dies that night, peacefully in his sleep. It is so peaceful, it doesn’t hurt. I go about my day.
The next day, I realize, oh my gosh, I haven’t told anyone - his death was so undisturbing, I forgot to let people know, Dad died in his sleep two nights ago.
Then I wake up, and it hits me that this is so far from the truth of what actually happened, and it feels like a shock and a heartbreak. When the dream is kinder than the real.
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After I posted the VA check post, I felt some relief. There! The darkness of this whole episode. 1% shared. Now to 2%!
I had this idea: I would go through my email, and find every email the VA sent me leading up to Dad’s death and make that my next post. I used to get these daily emails:
‘We are so sorry to let you know, 1 (10) (96) people at the home have corona virus.
We are saddened to let you know there’s been 1 (3) (19) deaths.”
It was a snowball, from April 5th to April 24th, I’d get these emails. It was just this quiet, dark, strange, surreal death counter. Creepy in a very 2020 way. There’s the masked slasher killer of Scream and there’s the emails of snowballing impending incoming unstoppable heartbreak.
But then: I had the idea, and I didn’t write it. I just got blocked for four weeks.
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Years ago, I was at a festival. I had gone to spend time with a best friend of mine, trip together for his first time, and just spend time together. All that had happened and it was the last night and I was on my own, dancing and thinking. Someone comes and finds me - their partner is having an overwhelming trip and they specifically asked for me. Could I go be with them?
The episode handles itself with a short stretch of support. The person is my friend and he knows that I know about a trauma he endured years ago - and my internal call is this festival is not the setting for trauma processing. With some support he is able to get himself back together and back into the festival. It seems like a near miss of a difficult episode.
Later, I am talking to one of my main teachers about the experience. I didn’t know what exactly I want to share. Something about the sudden role switch - it had struck me somehow. I said something to my teacher, like, I had really wanted to share about the experience with my best friend who was there with me, or someone, have someone experience that with me.
She just looked at me and said “No one can.”
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There are clean deaths and there are messy deaths. I think of Dad’s death as a particularly messy death. But it’s relative. Another best friend lost his mom and sister to a freak car accident. 100% unexpected. I feel outraged that I had to say goodbye to Dad over a videophone. I bet my friend would have killed for even that much goodbye.
I’d like to share every piece of weird creepy outraging upset that came along the way last year. To somehow share that experience, bring you into my small heart’s great heartbreak. But I think it might be like my teacher said. No one can do that with me. Of course people can love me and support me and sometimes someone asks a question, or just is present, in a way that some bit of my breath that’s held, heart that’s worn out, gets some relief. Feels a little lighter. It happens. But I think there’s also a truth: that was my unbelievably messy experience. I can be accompanied, but no one’s going to carry the load for me. No one can.
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Every rendition of the 5 stage Kubler-Ross grief model comes with a disclaimer. It’s not linear! It’s a sequence of 5 stages, but it’s not linear! Warning this Psychological Framework may give you a False Sense of Progress (TM.)
My grief dream is striking to me, because it was sharp, clear, emotional. I’ve learned there are many kinds of crying - I woke up with tears streaming down my face, that kind of release. And - it isn’t my all the time 24/7 experience anymore. I can see my mind grasping for progress, signs that It’s Getting Better. But undeniably I feel myself interested in my life again. I’ve been in Portland for grief sanctuary - will I stay here? What does work look like from this place where I feel somehow rebuilt into more of myself?
I don’t have grief dreams all the time anymore. I feel ordinary, mundane, life and love stress again: will I be loved and will I express myself in my work? The usual if-you’re-me concerns. For a while the grief just came like a horrible cold sweeping wind through my psyche. It blew every mundane concern out the door. There was a relief in that. Basically nothing else mattered. It was freeing. There wasn’t stress. Another sign of movement: I’m stressed by my life again.
It’s like I’m acting out my adult personality again, until a dream like this comes sweeping through. And I thought: oh, this is grief adolescence. Children don’t become adults directly but adolescents first. An in between stage of autonomy and differentiation and risk taking, but not all the way to adult. There’s still some child in them.
I can pretend to be an adult for stretches at a time, while my psyche keeps chewing away at the whole thing. And then there’s times like the dream. When I’m back in the viewpoint of grief as the only thing that really matters, the porthole to the web of love that really everything is all about anyways. If we’re going to die and lose everyone we love, then what really matters? And then, the ordinary adult planning mind settles back in. So am I going to keep living here?