Grief stays with you forever, but allows room for joy

“Every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

– William Shakespeare in “Much Ado About Nothing”

How long do you grieve?

As this and every new year begins – filled, as always, with often inexplicable optimism, earnest resolutions and a new-slate mentality – it steps forward out of a holiday season which wasn’t so merry for a lot of people, when the loss, recent or long standing, of loved ones tinged the merriment with sadness.

Despite the tinsel, the laughter, the eggnog, people were and are still grieving. I know several of them, and they are in my thoughts, especially now.

How long do you grieve? Not an easy question to answer, though experts can share insight that is well researched and scientific and humane. Forgive my uncredentialed and unstudied attempt, but I humbly offer my own answer.

I think of one friend in Spokane who is in her 70s, who found the love of her life in middle age. They met and married in Paris. What could be more romantic? Years later when he became ill with cancer, there was the long struggle – and now she is alone. It’s been two years.

The first year, she was sort of fine, relatively speaking. She got involved in her community and got on with living. But this second year has been a crippler. This is when the grief swept over her in crashing waves, when she tears up at the thought of him and finds herself floundering.

There’s a couple I know here in Spokane, now in their mid-30s, who lost their baby boy to a brain tumor. Christopher was 20-months-old; it was four months from diagnosis to death.

Another friend, well into her 80s, lost her daughter several decades ago. Michelle was 16 and was killed in an auto accident. She was the first person my own age that I met when my family moved to Florida. Michelle and I were very different, not best friends but friends nonetheless. But we also had a lot in common, too – both being only children and sharing the same birthday, which happens to be today.

Birthdays, especially when they coincide with a new year, are times of reflection.

I’ve stayed in contact with Michelle’s mother over the years, and we’ve grown close. I visit her always when I go to Florida. I’ll call her this afternoon, and we’ll talk about the usual things, always beginning with the weather. Joan loves to remind me just how warm and lovely it is back home, and she especially loves telling me about it in the winter. We’ll talk about her nieces, who I know, and about her health, and then we’ll talk about Michelle.

For years, I didn’t mention Michelle because I thought it would be too painful and, frankly, because I didn’t quite know how to. But then Joan shared how she misses hearing her daughter’s name spoken aloud and cherishes sharing memories of her. So many of the people now in Joan’s life never knew her daughter or even know that she once had one. But I do, and even though it makes Joan sad to talk about Michelle, it is sadder still not to.

My local friend has now set about writing a love story about her husband, and that project fills her with some tear-filled joy. She still goes on with her other activities, works at building a life for herself in Spokane, laughs with friends and, yes, still cries when she speaks of her dear husband. But she is taking a positive step, to tell their story and to heal her heart.

It’s just a few weeks short of two years since the young couple lost their son. Their daughter, about to turn 6, has been a big part of helping keep them keeping on. But it’s been hard. I heard them remark at an anniversary party some time back that being there was kind of like attending a party with a toothache.

But they are pregnant now and are cautiously optimistic, cautiously hopeful about a baby joining the family in the spring. A child who is gone is never replaced, of course, but a grieving family can welcome a new life and can find joy in that.

How long do you grieve? Forever, I think. Grief isn’t something you can master, but I think that while it’s always there, it ebbs and flows and does allow room for joy again – in the writing of a life’s story, in the conversation about a long-ago loss and in the positive expression about the future that a new life brings.

“Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.”

– James Russell Lowell in “The Vision of Sir Launfal”