What grief feels like - Our Twenties and Us

Grief never ends … But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It is the price of love.

— unknown

In March this year, my grandma died unexpectedly. She was only 66 years old and the youngest one of all my grandparents.

I had never experienced grief before and nothing could have prepared me for how it would actually feel. I never expected that emotions could cause such physical pain or that any feeling could go that deep and be felt that strongly.

Describing Grief

There is a song that says: “Where does all the love go when you love someone who’s gone”, and that is pretty much what grief is. It is the pain of having so much love left to give to a person but realising they will never be able to receive it again.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1bPQCUHLNwcHtH67XBqsky?si=tDP11T8uRgCXx6X0tlrm4g&utm_source=copy-link

Grief feels like the world has fallen apart and nothing can ever fix it again. Like everything crushes on top of you. There is so much weight in grief. It makes you want to scream; I have never felt so desperate in my entire life. You try to gain control but then you feel like nothing is in your control anymore. You realise you can’t do anything. It hurts from the very top of your chest down to your gut and sometimes in your whole body.

I found this Reddit post, comparing grief to waves:

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Assistance/comments/hax0t/comment/c1u0rx2/

It goes on to say that the waves become smaller and less frequent with time, and I’ve found that to be true so far.

Stages of Grief

According to Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, there are 5 stages to grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The intense pain and feeling of longing that grief is typically associated with is the depression stage, but grief is so much more than just depression.

I can personally relate to every single one of them, although they can be different for everyone. For example, denial doesn’t necessarily mean that you refuse to acknowledge the fact that someone you loved is gone, but also that you just can’t really grasp that reality yet.

I feel like anger is just the need to direct the pain you are feeling at something or someone, be it yourself, the world or the person who died. The desperation and helplessness that you feel when you realise that you have no control whatsoever makes you angry, but it also triggers the bargaining and depression stages.

The bargaining stage is when we ask all the “What if…?”- questions and start trying to do things that we think will make us feel better. These are probably the most irrational moments, because it is when some part of you still thinks there could be a way to get that person back, even though you logically know it’s not possible. There is actually some logic behind this though. When we are grieving, our body releases dopamine and oxytocin to motivate us to get that person back. So no, you are not crazy and delusional if you still feel like they will come knock on your door any minute.

Even though the order of these stages seems logical, in reality, they aren’t in any specific order at all. We rather jump back and forth between the different stages throughout our grieving process and not every person even goes through all of them.

So this is basically what we go through:

stages of grief: expectation vs. reality

https://dedyprastyo.com/5-stages-of-grief/

Mary-Frances O’Connor also says that over time, the yearning declines and acceptance increases, but I think there will always be at least a little bit of depression.

Why death feels so unreal

Even after months have passed, my grandma not being there still feels a little unreal. The thing is that, when someone you love dies, it doesn’t only impact your life, but it also changes your brain.

We have neurons in our brain that basically keep track of the people we love and who we depend on. When a person is not there anymore, they still exist in your head. The neurons are still there, and they keep looking for them.

I think that death is just an incredibly difficult concept for our brains to grasp, and I feel like no one will ever truly understand how a person can be there in one minute and gone in the next. So that is certainly a lot to wrap your head around.

How to deal with grief

…if you are grieving

It hurts so much, but as the quote at the beginning of this post says: It won’t stop, it will only change. I think the most important thing when grieving is to allow yourself to feel any emotion that you are feeling, whether it is positive or negative.

Even in the early phase of grief, there will be small moments of happiness; things that make you smile. Don’t feel guilty about it. Loosing someone doesn’t mean that the world ends, even though it feels that way. You will cry a lot, you will scream and you will feel the most desperate you have ever felt. Allow that too. Every emotion has its place and time, so don’t force yourself to be happy when you’re sad and don’t force yourself to be sad when you feel alright.

…if someone else is grieving

If someone you know is grieving, the best thing you can do is to be there for them. And don’t be afraid to mention the person who is dead. Give them the room to talk about their feelings and their grief, because it honestly feels so good to talk about it. You never know if the person actually wants to talk about their feelings or not, but I think that you can still ask a question. If they give you a short answer, you can still change the topic, but they might actually be glad to have someone to talk to.

One of the most compassionate ways we can show up for those who are grieving is being willing to remember alongside them.

-Kristen Dial

What grief can teach us

Loosing someone so close to me has made me realise how incredibly precious little things can be. I never felt so much meaning in hugs until there was someone who I’d never be able to hug anymore.

But there are also other things like shared experiences, inside-jokes or simply spending time together.

It also made me value the people I have around me more. Grieving together doesn’t necessarily ease the pain, but you feel like it’s easier to carry. Excruciating becomes bearable. I have never before taken so much comfort from simply talking to others.

One more thing that I have learned is that you should never wait with anything. For my grandma’s last birthday before she died, my whole family did a video for her where we all talked about what we loved most about her. Before we started the whole thing, I wondered if we should rather wait for a “special birthday”, like 70, but you can imagine now how grateful I am that we still did it.

I don’t even know how to wrap up this post, but I hope it has helped or comforted you in some way.

Wish you all the best and I will see you next week!

Also: I was very inspired by these quotes and poems and maybe you will relate to them too 💞

pinterest board with quotes and poems about grief