Juxtaposition of Nostalgia and Grief
Juxtaposition - the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect
Ahhh ’tis the season for my grievers to struggle the most! Depending on where you are at in your grieving journey, this time of year is filled with dread or joy. For most grievers, it’s a mix of something in between. Do the holidays ever feel better after loss?
I remember hearing the saying, “time heals all wounds” when I was younger and later this notion was challenged by another saying, “it’s not the time itself, but what you do with the time that heals.” It made me rethink a lot of what I had clung onto. It was true. Time can pass, years and decades at a time, and we all know those people who are just completely miserable and a shell of themselves. Time itself can’t heal all wounds.
In the beginning of grief, there’s not really a whole lot of space to do much outside of processing what the heck has even just happened, all while being expected to tackle a million logistical death related tasks and paperwork, and still upholding every other facet of life’s responsibilities. Everything’s fine, right? At this point, you’re lucky to just keep your head above water and hold onto your support system for dear life to pull you through.
As time passes, loneliness can increase and the fears around being a burden also become concerning. Your grief remains large, but maybe to the outside world it seems like you’ve healed and have it all under control. It’s quite silly when we shrink ourselves down. Those that expect that of us are quite frankly, not our people. You also find that out the hard way sometimes after death. The disappointments after the loss.
The danger in shrinking grief down, is that it inevitably will resurface somewhere - in the argument with your spouse, in the depression that seeps into your life, into the impatience with your children, into the disappearing of yourself. You see, when you push away the grief, you also push away the nostalgia. When you disconnect from one feeling, you tend to disconnect from all feelings. We don’t have the ability to cherry pick emotions, they sorta come as a package deal. We need grief to access nostalgia, to access memories, and ultimately to stay connected to our loved ones.
Imagine if we never felt grief? The memory of our loved ones would disappear into the abyss. It’s hard for many to hold in this justaposition ~ Holding seemingly polar opposite experiences in the same space, and feeling it all simultaneously. We’re often taught that we feel one thing at a time. As a child, “How do you feel? Pick one!” feels like common place. Is it ok to feel more than one feeling at a time? Absolutely! In fact, we’re designed for it.
It happens slowly, y’all. In the beginning the grief fills the room, there’s very little space for presence with others or sitting with comforting memories. As you allow patience and time for your grief to process, you’ll notice feelings of connection to your loved one, which may be thwarted quickly by the pang of ache in remembering. Eventually the pang becomes softer, and you’ll notice the connection and comfort feel bigger. You’ll welcome the thoughts and feelings of your loved one. Will the pang ever fully go away? For most of us, it won’t. But the desire to feel that connection, to carry on a new way of having a relationship with your loved one, after they’ve physically left this Earth, is worth the pang. We learn to allow all the feels to take up the space it needs, to trust our bodies were built for grieving. Over time, grief can lay down its heavy work and allow nostalgia to carry the load.
There will days this may feel impossible. Hold on to your glimmers of hope. Hold on to moments of presence when you just notice the feel of air on your skin, or the way sun passes through tree branches. Hold on to people who support and love you. I cannot promise it will not hurt like hell some days, but I can promise that if you do this, there is more life waiting for you. I promise you’ll be so glad you kept going.
