Silence

Silence of the grave

Silence surrounds me in my sorrow

Silence because no one wants to hear

Silence because grief is too scary for most

Silence because there are no adequate words

Silence is golden

Silence allows me to redo my point of view

Silence is safe from all the scoldings

Silence is wondering why I keep writing and posting

Silence is a place to die or grow

I didn’t experience “phases of grief;” I just felt overwhelming pain. The phases of grief are: shock and denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. I wish I could be like those people who put their grief somewhere else and never shed a tear. I grieved loudly and often for at least the first year, upsetting many folks that wanted me to shut up and take some pills. That always seemed like a dishonoring of my daughter and her life. She was that dear to me. Not grieving her death would have been to discount that. The stress of being stoic is immense, and a killer of those who choose not to grieve.

That was choice number one on the long journey back from destroyed to rebuilt: simply to grieve.

Grieving is not something we have to learn; it comes with the package, and it is part of the human condition. Evidently, it is an evolutionary mechanism for humans to be able to deal with the pain of grievous loss. We learn to recognize the symptoms and stages. The really hard part is to learn how to express our grief in ways that are healing. Who wants to be sad in such a chirpy culture as ours? Better not to say anything and suffer in silence. But that brings its own problems.