Five Years
The day I started this post was March 13, 2023, five years to the day since my brother died. I choose to say died instead of some softer version like saying he passed away or since he left us… or the more annoying since he went to heaven. I can only speak from my personal experience, but I have often felt a pressure to change the words I say for the benefit of others. No one wants to talk about death so we try to gloss over it. But the truth is…
We didn’t lose them.
We didn’t watch them pass.
They didn’t go to heaven.
They died.
And it hurt.
It hurt way more than any awkwardness you may feel reading this.
And I don’t apologize if that makes you feel uncomfortable, because it should make you uncomfortable.
Death is uncomfortable.
It sucks. Period. It is discomfort in its highest form. No amount of angelic imagery or hallucinations of a better place can change the heartache that my family and I felt. It was brutal and five years later I still have moments that take me back to that day and I feel it fresh all over again. To be clear, this is not a debate or statement about what happens in death, this is solely about how we talk about death. What I have learned is that fully feeling every ounce of the pain, saying the uncomfortable words instead of hiding behind pleasantries, has been part of the healing process for me.
A while back I started following Jspark3000 on Instagram; he is a Hospital Chaplain that offers grief support to those that are dying. As someone who encounters death every day, he has an interesting relationship with grief. He encourages people to be honest about what they are feeling, which is contrary to what we are taught. On March 14, he posted this:
"I have met so many patients who beat their own chests to stop weeping. It is not their fault: they have been told that their tears make them weak or incapable of strength. But weeping, I've found, is its own strength. It is to fully feel the wound, to truly encounter it. Those who mock tears cannot see all of themselves. They will not see others either… When we censor our pain, we bury all that makes us human and humane."
Whether you are grieving yourself, or someone in your life has suffered a loss, there is a part of us that wants to skip over the ugliness; a part of us that needs to censor the pain. When you can, provide space for the full spectrum of emotion that comes with a loss. You don't need to understand it, and you definitely don't need to know what to say, you just need to let it be.
