Sunday, March 17, 2013

A Selfish Grief

So 4 months after I experienced a pretty big loss in my life (a dear friend passing away), I had some major breakthroughs in my grief. In the past couple weeks, I felt like I finally made some progress on dealing with these feelings. 

Recently I realized that there were 2 factors that were making this loss so hard for me:
1) I felt some regret and guilt about the last couple of interactions I had with this person.
2) The reasons I was feeling so much grief seemed very selfish to me. I'll explain below.

The regret factor was easy to figure out: I wished I had handled things differently the last time I talked with this person. Also, there was a time when I should have called, was urged by the circumstances and by my own intuition to call, and I didn't, and that turned out to be a mistake. What I've noticed with loss is that when there is guilt involved, I tend to grieve more... Not only do I miss the person, but I have all this other stuff to deal with as well. The grief becomes sorrow and shame at my own shortcomings and the ways I perceive that I failed the relationship, instead of just remaining as grief with missing the person and having their physical presence in my life.

But really, what use does regret have in our lives? It may prompt us to do things differently in the future, to take opportunities when they come and follow our intuition, but it doesn't change past situations. Regret coupled with someone passing away is, in that way, a pretty cruel emotion. It's like twisting the knife in an already horrible situation, when we are already feeling so much sadness.

The selfish side of the grief? Well, I miss my friend. But at this point, I am not overly concerned for her well-being. What I mean is, I know that she is doing just fine and that she has moved on to the next stage of her existence. I know without a doubt that she is close to God, as she has always been, and that she is surrounded by love and grace. I know that while her physical body has died, her existence, her identity, hasn't really gone anywhere. Love never dies, and she was all about love and she still is. But I am still sad because, although I'm confident that she is doing well and continuing on in her eternal existence, I miss having her physically here. I want to touch her hands, hear her laugh, tease her, hug her. My sadness is not out of worry over how she is doing, but about our friendship and how relationships must necessarily change when one passes on.

There is another part of the grief that seems selfish to me. My dear friend thought well of me, of course, as our dear friends tend to do. She was so effusive in her compliments of me, so loving and tender in her comments, always seeing the best side of me. When she passed away, I felt part of my good was lost as well. This makes about as much sense as if some part of a person can be lost just because their mirror breaks. But because she saw so much good in me, and I was doubting how much good other people saw, it was like I lost part of my self-esteem. Another friend of mine told me that all my good was not wrapped up in her. Her passing didn't mean that I suddenly lost some of my own innate worth. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but my friend's comments helped me immensely.

Another friend asked me if I ever talked with my friend even though she had passed away. I could still talk with her; she wasn't really gone so why not? And my friend asked me if I had let her know that I was going to be okay. This was a new insight for me; I didn't realize that maybe my friend, although she had passed on, might realize or be cognizant of the fact that I was having a hard time with this grief. Suddenly, I didn't want my friend to worry about me anymore (if people can even worry after they've passed). I wanted her to feel content and continue on down her path, not worry about her family or friends still here. That same afternoon, I talked with her and let her know that although I missed her, I was going to be fine. And I told her that I would see her again sometime, so all was well. I got a wonderful sense of peace after this. I'm not exactly sure why this was, but I was so grateful.

Finally, another friend recently told me that this existence, this reality, was not all about the mortal. If that was all we had, this mortal experience that was in front of us, what was the point? What was our purpose? This was very helpful as well. There is so much more than can be seen with our human views.

As strange as it may sound, realizing that my grief was selfish was sort of comforting. It almost made the sadness seem less intense. With this realization, I can now remind myself that she is doing fine, that I just miss the connections we had when she was occupying a material body. It is reassuring to remind myself that, although I am struggling with the grief sometimes, it is not a bigger issue (eternity, her love, our emotional connection) that is in question here. Those things are all intact and are part of the truth of God and the truth of our friendship.