Grief, Loss and Love
The first week of November is a bleak one for me, one of sorrow and sadness. The grey sky, lack of sunlight, constant cloud cover that often brings cold, damp rain, the branches on the trees standing starkly, vulnerable, and naked are the visual representations of the hollowness of grief and sorrow I feel.
My maternal grandfather was the world to me. He was the sun, the moon, the stars, and the person who loved me unconditionally simply because I was me. I did not have to perform or please or try to figure out the rules as they changed daily in my world. When he came to visit, I knew that calm days were mine and I could be silly and behave as any child under the age of eight would. We shared the same joke every time he came for lunch, and he laughed even though he knew what was coming. He reacted with clear surprise when the punch line came, as though it was a joke he had never heard.
Three weeks before my eighth birthday my world came to a crushing stop. This giant of a man died unexpectedly. My parents informed me that he was unwell before leaving my sister and me with a babysitter on the evening of the seventh. When I woke the next day, I asked my father how my grandfather was and he starkly told me “Sorry kiddo, he died.” The shock froze me in place for a moment and then I did what seemed natural. I hid in the closet in my bedroom with my springer spaniel where I could cry in private, not knowing how my vulnerability might be held against me. I could not understand how my grandfather could be here in this world one day and then suddenly just “gone.” My first experience with death and loss. Once I appeared from my cocoon no one had any answers for me that helped me to make sense of this moment. First loss of love, first feeling of abandonment, the first meeting with grief that would walk alongside me for the rest of my life.
The world seemed to end that day. My best friend and protector had left me. Who was I going to be without him? Who would laugh at my silly jokes or tell me I looked good in plaid? Who would teach me how to snap my fingers or whistle on a blade of grass? Who would call me by that special nickname? Who would make me laugh with his silly stories and silly songs? Who would lift me up and wipe the tears when I fell and say, “I’ve got you.”
The funeral was a few days later and despite begging and pleading with my parents I was firmly denied the opportunity to attend. Told that I was too young. Or I might be frightened. Or I might not understand. They wanted to protect me they said – people who thought they were protecting me denying me the opportunity to say goodbye. The guilt I felt for not being there for my grandfather when he had been there countless times for me. Just gone. Without me.
A little more than a year later my father decided that we were moving for his job. My sister and I were promised we’d be getting our own bedrooms – to soften and sweeten the blow of having to leave the place we knew best. There was one condition though. We couldn’t bring my spaniel (she was a gift to me when I was 7) because the man we were renting the house from did not allow dogs. Told to sacrifice at age 9. To take the bedroom to myself and give up the dog I loved as much as the grandfather I’d lost. To be put in that position with no say in the matter was heart breaking.
We lived in that new town for one year and moved right back to where we had started. Minus my dog, who I had been told the year before by my father was taken to the farm of a friend of my aunt’s. I was reminded that the spaniel needed room to run and a farm was going to be the perfect home for her.
When I was two or three years older of course I realized, my dog had never gone to a farm. Or I suppose you could refer to a place to be euthanized a farm. I questioned why my parents did not find a house to rent that did allow pets but was never given an answer. I was struck by how callously the life of an animal could be extinguished ultimately for nothing. And I felt once again not only loss and grief but the added feeling of betrayal.
Old grief when it rises to the surface is as fresh as new grief. It lives in your soul in a quiet corner it has carved out and waits for the moment when you hear it calling to say “hello, do you remember me?” It is love that has never died that has woven itself into your heart in tiny stitches that break open just a little as you remember and reflect on the love and the loss.
Sitting with grief is picking up a needle and thread and putting those stitches back together, slowly, and tenderly and whispering all the memories, the moments, and the love back in place. Until the next time grief rises to say, “Come with me. I’ve got you.”
