The morning after a person’s death, there is a lot to be done. There are phone calls that have to happen. There are decisions to be made – by everyone. There are questions that plague you and no answers that satisfy you. Your world stops, yet the cars keep driving. The wind keeps whistling. Sometimes – in a cruel twist of fate – the sun will keep shining in an overwhelmingly blue sky. If you’re lucky, folks might slow down for you. They might let you catch your breath, before quickly tossing you a metaphorical towel to dab off the sweat of existential dread. And then, while the world crumbles to dust around you, as both everything and nothing has seemed to change all at once, it’s suddenly time to get back to work. 

“Time heals,” is the age-old adage used to comfort those contending with grief for the first time. Up there with “I’m so sorry for your loss,” it feels equally as empty as it does well-intentioned. We know both things are true, time does soften sharp edges, people truly are sorry. Still, it never feels like more than a vapid social pleasantry and desperate attempt to console when you’re the one offering those words. And when you’re the one receiving them, you’re confronted with this surreal sensation where you almost want to laugh as your chest begins to cave in on itself. 

The unfortunate thing is, there are no “right” words. There is no cure or solution to grief beyond doing the grieving. It’s the physical manifestation of that ultimate lesson we learned as little kids, “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We can’t go around it. I guess we’ll have to go through it.”

But how do we go through it? How do we survive it? 

We start by promising ourselves-no matter how deep the dread goes, or how consuming it gets, no matter if you’ve convinced yourself you’re more hopeless than you are human, even then, we promise ourselves that we are gonna endure this moment. And then we do that. And we keep doing that. And it is wildly unpleasant, because some of the features of life on Earth are actually not meant to feel good or fun at all. (Shocking, disappointing, I know.)  Eventually, after you’ve survived a couple of spars with grief and come out the other side beaten, bloodied, and ultimately, breathing…You begin to resent the whole “time heals” thing a little less. 

This is because you begin to realize it’s not some invisible force that’s magically taking away your pain. In fact, your pain never really left you. You’ve just incorporated it into your experience here. The once puny, weak, “grief-wrestling” muscle you donned has developed into something much more shredded and impressive. You are made different in a way that no one is ever excited about, but everyone who allows themself the privilege to know and be known will eventually face. It all sucks and it’s all okay and your mind (as much as you may doubt it) does have the capacity to acknowledge both of those truths at once. It just takes practice, and you’re allowed to drag your feet while you do it. If you’re waiting for that process to be easy or comfortable, you might as well start getting your mail forwarded to the state of perma-stagnation you’ve just moved into. 

The object of grief is not to return to who you were before, nor is it to conquer the feeling into submission.  You just live with it. Sometimes you fight it, other times you sit on opposite sides of the room and look at it out of the corner of your eye. Some days you might just feel brave enough to feed it out of the palm of your hand, and you may even notice how strangely beautiful it can be when it’s not trying to kill you. And then-woah- it’s trying to kill you all over again. What the heck? I thought we were cool now? 

Not one bit of grieving is linear. The “Why am I not over it yet?” and “Ugh, I should feel better by now!” of it all is the thing keeping you tethered to your suffering! In removing the expectation of this utopian future where you’re the first person in history that will string together the right words, or do all of the right things, or stumble upon some undiscovered prophecy that will ensure you never feel a bad thing again, you can finally start to live more authentically. It gives you space to honor those moments where it’s all too much and you simply can’t do the things you used to. It also gives you perspective when you’re winning, that you might lose again someday. 

This doesn’t mean to pre-game your suffering, but rather to really take in the moments where it all feels good. And when it feels bad, you won’t feel like you’ve failed somehow, because you’ll know that it’s not an issue of morality or your value as an individual, it’s literally just an inevitably of life. When you are sure you will never get through it, you will be able to point to all the other times you were sure you’d never get through it, but did.

As much as you may hate it – the sun is going to come up again. The days are going to keep passing you by. Whether or not you’re ready, time will immediately begin to whisk you further away from both a painful ground zero, and those final tangible moments shared with the one you’ve lost. It’s a horribly bittersweet sensation. Grief is going to show up for you, it’ll attend your birthdays, your celebrations, your good days, and your bad ones. It will demand a seat at the table, and if not provided, it will loom over your head like an unwelcomed guest. 

So I implore you to welcome it, in all of its unpleasantness. Ask it questions. Yell at it. Give it dirty looks. Cry with it. Laugh with it. Watch your favorite movies with it. Hell, go on a long, romantic walk on the beach together and tell it all about the “You” you were before it changed you forever. Then cry again because of how unfair it all feels. Just don’t avoid it. Don’t lock it in the basement of your subconscious and then wonder why you can’t move forward. Build an actual relationship with this Thing that is going to follow you around forever and suddenly it is no longer a mysterious and faceless monster. It’s just your old, strange, reliable friend Grief.