Grief

Grief is a funny thing.  It's an emotion you know you'll have to deal with from time to time.  It's a feeling that you can't really describe, but there's no doubt when you're feeling it.  Which is what makes it so funny — everyone feels grief in their own way, in their own time, and — quite usually — with an emotional response that's completely different than what you'd expect.

I bring this up because I have been dealing with a lot of grief in recent weeks.  I feel grief over the impending loss of my grandparents; I feel grief for myself and my (lack of) health; I feel grief for my family; I feel grief for lost friends who shouldn't have ever been taken from us so soon.  The fact is, I'm presently facing so many hard situations that I'm amazed the grief hasn't overtaken me.  Honestly, I find it somewhat abnormal that I don't spend all my time crying.  But that's not how I've been dealing with my grief.  In fact, I've barely cried in the past several months.  My grief has made me numb.  Tired.  Emotionless.  

My grief has become a form of self-preservation.

I hadn't realized what an integral part grief had begun to play in my life until last night.  Grey's Anatomy returned for its new season, and (spoiler alert) the subject was grief.  George died and Izzie came back to fight another day.  The majority of the next two hours followed all our favorite characters and tracked how they dealt with their grief.  Everyone's actions, feelings, and expressions of grief pretty much mirrored my own.  Everyone dealt with George's death in a different way.  Everyone had their own way of coping.  It came out that everyone was confused; scared; in disbelief; angry; apathetic; and finally, sad.  It made me feel better to see that normal people don't act the way you're "supposed to" when bad things happen.  I felt my grief through theirs.

And then I cried.

For two hours, I cried.  I cried during the show.  I cried when Izzie broke down and said her goodbyes.  I cried when Bailey shut down.  I cried when Meredith couldn't cry.  I simply ... cried.

We always hear about the five stages of grief — you know the ones.  Denial and isolation; anger; bargaining; depression; and finally, acceptance.  But Grey's nailed it last night.  Grief isn't so simple.  There's not a handbook by which you can prepare yourself.  There's no "right way" to grieve or to act when you're hurting.  Grief just comes ... and you never know what it's going to look like until it's upon you.

That's what makes it so funny.  Literally.

During the Grey's funeral last night, Izzie and the other interns had to walk away from the service.  Not because they broke down and couldn't hold in their tears.  No.  Because Izzie couldn't hold in her laughter.  And I loved that soooo much.  Laughter oftentimes comes at the most inappropriate times and places ... including funerals and in the midst of grief and tears.  It was just so true.

Shortly before the show premiered last night, I was in the bed with my parents, holding my mama's hand and hugging her as she cried.  I shed a few silent tears during this time.  It was heartbreaking.  It was pure, unabridged grief.  And then my dad walked in with a hymnal.  Hilarity ensued. 

See, he keeps this old hymnal in the bathroom just to read over old gospel lyrics sometimes, and he was coming in to recite the verses of "It Is Well With My Soul."  It was an unbelievably sweet and sensitive thing to do.  But my mom and I didn't let that "traditional" grief overtake us.  Instead, I said, "watch out, dad's got the hymnal.  He's going to sing to you."

I started giggling uncontrollably.  My mom laughed out loud for a good minute.  It caught on, and my dad got in on the act.  He started laughing too.

At that moment, that's what our grief looked like.  It looked like laughter and fun.  Was the pain in our lives diminished?  Maybe.  Was everything better?  Absolutely not.  It was just ... grief.

Jason Mraz has a line in one of my favorite songs that's really resonating with me today, given the events of last night (both real and imagined for TV).  He sings that, "it's when you cry just a little, but you laugh in the middle that you've made it."  I think that's true.  And I think Izzie was right when she said pain is what keeps us alive.  I think it's true that we only know how to go on living when the pain hurts so much that we can't breathe anymore.  Grief propels us forward.  Grief takes our emotions away.  Grief takes our breath away like a sucker punch to the gut.  And grief makes us laugh.  How could it not?  I mean, when you put it all together, how can you find the events of this life anything but insane?  How — within one group of friends — could someone survive Stage 4 cancer, how could three people get married (one via Post-It), and how could one person die by getting hit by a bus?  It's something that inspires incredulity.  It's something you'd see on a TV show.

But leave it to real life to one-up fiction.  How — within one family and group of friends — can you prepare to lose two grandparents (or parents, depending on perspective) within a staggeringly short period of time?  How do you go on without seeing someone you love?  How do you keep the hope alive that you will get better when nothing seems to work?  How do you reconcile the fact that you lost your best friend to cancer when she was just 26 years old?  I mean, how can you look at all that at one time and keep from laughing?

Grief doesn't come in stages.  Grief shows itself in different forms at different times.  Grief serves as a form of self-preservation; grief allows your heart to feel only what it is able to hold.

It's a funny thing, grief.  It lets you know that you're still alive.  And somehow, that gives you the strength to keep on going.