Grieving Is Hard

By: Amy Marcle

My therapist once told me “You know, I’ve noticed the only emotion you are completely comfortable expressing is anger.”  During that time, I was completely misinterpreting everything anyone said to me so by the time I processed her remark, it sounded like this…” Man, you sure are a bitch.”  Turns out, however, that my therapist was absolutely spot on in her observations.  During our sessions, she had seen me be confrontational.  She had seen me be bitter.  She had heard me flat out lie.  She had experienced my outbursts of anger. But, as she pointed out, she had never heard or seen me cry.  As she pressed for an answer as to why I did not show tearful emotions, I was already holding back anger in my head thinking “if this doctor makes me cry, I swear on my life I’m never coming back to another session.  Ever.”

I can feel angry and be completely fine with it.  But, if a wave of sadness ever comes over me, I simply drown in it for what seems an eternity.  That is why I fight it.  I fight sadness with all I have.  Whenever I feel sad trying to tiptoe into my sunny day, I bring out all the weapons ready for a full-on war.  My mind is like a magician’s hat, full of tricks.  I will use humor, anger, blame, sarcasm, whatever it takes to push my sadness far, far away from me.  I don’t want it touching me.  Period. 

I learned how to swallow my sadness at an early age.  Being a daughter of a Church of Christ minister, death and sadness became a much-visited part of my life.  When you are a child and your father has a funeral to preach, you also attend, whether you know the people or not.  Most of these funerals never bothered me because I was too young at the time to process the reality that death was final.  I mean, I knew about heaven, but it was difficult for me to process that the person’s life was physically over.  I often sat, emotionless, as my father recited comforting scriptures to family members left behind.  I never felt any pain whatsoever when the music played, and the people wept.  And then one day, that ended.  I attended a funeral that not only made my throat hurt as a forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat, but it also made my heart hurt as well.  And I did not even know the deceased person whose funeral we were attending.

To protect the names of the people in this recollection, I am changing the names to fictitious names.  Most of you will not know who I am talking about anyway, but some from my hometown will remember in detail the tragedy I am about to recall.  In the Summer of 1987, a friend of our family lost his wife in a tragic automobile accident.  The young couple had only been married for two weeks when the accident occurred.  I remember it so clearly because the husband had visited our home many, many times during my childhood.  A former student of my father, “Dave” would visit to chat with my parents about life and current events.  I always thought it was great to have him visit, because I would sit in on my parents’ conversations with Dave and felt like I was a grownup too. 

During one of “Dave’s” visits, he announced to our family that he had met someone and was getting married soon.  My parents were extremely happy that he had found someone because he was a terrific guy who had a lot to offer.   To our knowledge, he had never dated very much, so that made his announcement even a bigger reason to celebrate.  If “Dave” had found someone who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, well, we just tickled pink about it.

Time passed and “Dave” and his fiancé, “Beth” were married.  We did not attend the wedding, but “Dave” had promised us he was going to bring his new bride by to introduce us.  Two short weeks later, we received a telephone call telling us that “Dave’s” wife had been killed in an automobile accident.  Two weeks.  They were married for two weeks.  He had searched his entire life for someone to love forever, and he got to keep her for two whole weeks.  At nine years old, this was the most unfair event I had ever witnessed.  I was sad for “Dave.”  Extremely sad.

When we arrived at the funeral home, I remember feeling uneasy.  This was not my first rodeo; I had been to hundreds of funerals already in my short life.  But this was different.  To me, this funeral should not even be happening.  “Dave and Beth” should still be honeymooning and planning their new life together.  Dave should have been building a house, not digging a grave.  My eyes began to water as we waited in line with hundreds of other people waiting to pay their respects.  What was happening?  What emotion was this?  I did not like it, simply because I was afraid, I would not be able to control it.

We were seated just in time for the music to begin.  The hardest part of a funeral for me is listening to the music.  For those few moments, you sit in your thoughts, creating a visual inside your mind of the music and coinciding it to the life of the person who has passed.  I did not know “Beth” but could only imagine the life she shared with Dave during their short time together.  The lump started forming in the base of my throat.  It was way too large to try to swallow and was actually preventing me from being able to breathe normally.  If this was what grief felt like, I did not want any part of it.  The hymn Blessed Assurance continued to play as I fought harder and harder to keep a tear from rolling down my cheek.  I knew once one drop fell; it was over with for me.  I had to control it.  And that moment is when I learned to fight so hard against crying for anything.  I was sincerely afraid that if people saw me crying, they would think it was disrespectful because after all, I did not even know her, but I was grieving for Dave. 

My ability to hold back the tears during funerals would only strengthen before that year was over.  It was the week of Thanksgiving and we had just moved into our new home that had been built over the summer.  We had lived there less than two weeks and we would be hosting Thanksgiving for our entire family, cousins and all, that year.  My Granny Usery, my maternal grandmother, was going to be seeing our home for the very first time.  Suffering a stroke nine years prior, she had lived in a nursing home for the entirety of my life.  She was paralyzed on one side but did not let that stop her from being a spunky little redhead and often the life of the party at the home in which she resided.  I had been telling her all about my new house and kept reminding her that on Thanksgiving Day she would get to see it.  I had never been so excited for Thanksgiving Day, but all that changed with one phone call.

Our home phone rang about 6:15 am that day before Thanksgiving.  An early phone call like that usually meant one of the teachers was calling my mother, a substitute teacher, to teach her class that day.  But that was not the nature of this phone call.  It was the nursing home where Granny lived.  She was sick and needed to be taken to the hospital.  I was only ten years old at that time, but I knew this was not good news at all.  But, to avoid that feeling of sadness that I had sworn to myself I would never feel again, I carried on with my day.  My parents dropped me off at school early that morning so they could rush to the hospital.  I had never seen them in such a hurry.  I overhead my dad tell the school secretary that my Granny was headed to the hospital and that she was cyanotic.  If I had been equipped with Google at that point in my life, I would have searched myself into oblivion trying to find out exactly what that meant for Granny.  I knew it was not good from the look on the secretary’s face.

The day before Thanksgiving meant that our school would be having a Thanksgiving program in the gymnasium with songs and poems.  At the end of the program, our principal made his usual announcements pertaining to the holiday break.  He ended it with these words, “and be careful going home.  Some of our people who are a part of our school family have already had bad news and Thanksgiving will not be very happy for them unfortunately.”  I looked around the crowded gym wondering who he was talking about.  What family had been devastated this morning already?

The bell rang and I ran straight to my parent’s car waiting out front.  Before I could even get the door opened, I probed my parents on the condition of my grandmother.  “How’s granny?”  My mom looked straight ahead and broke the news to me that Granny Usery had died.  I’m sure they explained to me what happened, but that news sent me into an inward meltdown.  Visions of her seeing my house for the first time flashed before my eyes, she would not get to ever see it now.  The announcement made by our principal echoed over and over in my head.  It was us.  We were the family who had been dealt the bad news.  And I instantly shut down.  Emotionless.  Staring out the window into the cold grey skies, we waited for my brother to make his way out to the car.  I did not give my mom the chance to say a word when my brother opened the door, “Granny died” I said a stone face. And I went back to staring out the window.  Thanksgiving was going to stink.  And I was certain, that every Thanksgiving from that point on would be a reminder of just how terrible this day had turned out to be.

We gathered together for Thanksgiving as a family, but it was not a traditional holiday by any means.  We had a visitation and a funeral to attend.  And the songs would play.  Those sad, sad songs that cause my throat to swell shut would play at my Granny’s funeral.  I told myself not to cry.  Because I knew that if I did, people would want to console me.  I did not want that.  I did not want to feel anything at all. And so that’s what I did, I sat through my Granny’s funeral without shedding one single tear.  But, oh, they would come later.

Christmas Eve of that same year, I tossed and turned in my bed trying to find sleep that was refusing to be found.  It was not that I was excited about Christmas, I was too old for that by now.  It was that something was missing.  Granny would not be at Christmas this year.  She would not be there to gain joy from watching all her grandkids open presents.  She would not be there to cry when it was time for her to go home.  She always hated leaving us or when we would have to leave her.  It had been four weeks since her passing, and I had yet to cry even once.  I had so much pinned up emotion inside of my ten-year-old heart that I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack and die if I did not let it out.  But would the tears ever stop?  I was not so sure. 

It was the middle of the night and I tiptoed into my brother’s room.  I’m sure he wasn’t surprised to wake up in a panic at me standing over him.  I did that all the time when I wanted to wake him up but was too afraid to actually wake him up at the same time.  Just stand and wait.  But he was surprised when I sat down on his bed and started crying.  I told him how much I missed Granny and how I dreaded Christmas day without her.  I told him I did not like crying, but I had to let it out.  He consoled me until I grew tired and finally tiptoed back to my room to fall asleep.  Grieving for the loss of my Granny was an experience I had to feel if I was ever going to move on and feel better. As painful as grief can be, not grieving can be even harder on our minds and our souls.

As I grew older, my ability to not cry at funerals continued to be maintained but sometimes for different reasons.  Often, I still refuse to feel the emotion because I will lose all control of my emotions.  It is easier for me to fight them off than it is to turn them off.  But, sometimes, I find it hard to cry at funerals because I truly understand that there is life beyond the grave.  And if someone dies that has been suffering, death is an answered prayer for them. 

When Jason’s father passed away in May 2021, I could not really make myself grieve for very long.  Jason himself stayed insanely busy, cleaning out his dad’s shop and helping his mother just to keep his mind off the loss he was suffering.  I tried to think about all the funny moments I had experienced with Danny.  He was a kind soul, funny, never said a bad word about anyone, and loved his family.  He had fought a long, hard battle with lung cancer.  He was ready to go home.  I firmly believe that.  I believe that his body was fighting but his soul was prepared and that when he left his earth, he was in a much better place. It is easy for us to want to hold on, but to let go, that brings a peace to the dying because they often hold on just for us.

A year and six days after Jason lost his father, his mother passed away from Covid.  Covid had also just recently taken the life of Jason’s best friend, Terry.  Recovering from these losses was extremely difficult for Jason. I wanted him to grieve to get past it, but grief became hard for him.  Was I upset about these losses?  Absolutely!  But I witnessed the discomfort and pain and anxiety that was torturing his mother, Robbie, as she laid in that hospital bed.  She had missed Danny for 12 months and she was ready to be with him again.  We had found journals she had written describing in detail how much she longed to be with Danny.  As sad as I was to lose my in-laws under such circumstances, I was also overcome with a feeling of peace knowing they were both where they wanted to be.  Once you understand the life you can have after death, grieving becomes different.  You grieve for your losses, but you rejoice for the departed’s new eternal life. 

Grieving is a painful process that is different for each person.  For me, I grieve by remembering the good times.  But I also force myself not to feel the pain that comes with the loss.  And by doing that, I often open the door up for addictive behaviors to creep back into my life.  I have learned that in order to maintain a healthy mental state, I have to grieve and let feelings out.  If you have a hard time releasing your grief, I encourage you to find a therapist or someone you can discuss your feelings with, even if it is a stranger.  Pain heals faster when it is shared with others.  Feel free to message us if you need help grieving.  We can point you to resources that have helped us tremendously through the difficult losses we have been through.