What Does Time Have To Do With Grief?

Issue 11.15

I would like to share a great article about time and grief by author Pat Schwiebert:

Everything. Just consider how, in “normal life,” our lives are run by the clock and the calendar. Some of us have a clock in every room so we can keep track of the time. Few of us have the courage to live without wearing a watch because we’re afraid we might be late for something. Time is precious to us. We live in a society that reminds us that every moment counts, and some of us are masters at cramming as much activity as possible into every moment. And when we are grieving, our experience still has much to do about time.

Time Stands Still

When we are grieving, we may feel like the rest of the world is going on as usual while our life has stopped. Just last week, after my friend died, I passed a neighbor watering his lawn. He seemed totally unaffected by, and most likely unaware of, Sarah’s death. How could that be? He only lives a block away. Didn’t he feel the same shift in the universe that I felt when she died? Doesn’t he realize someone really special is missing?

Time’s Up

Most people will allow about a one-month grace period where we are permitted to talk about our loss and even cry openly. During this time, our friends will probably seem to be attentive to our needs. But when the month is up, they may be thinking, if not actually telling us, that it is time to move on and we need to get over “it”. They may want us to get back to normal. We may be surprised how many of our friends (and relatives too) will become uncomfortable with our need to dwell on our sorrow. They may not appreciate that it takes time to readjust our life to the loss. Maybe what  they are saying is, “Time’s up for me to be able to be present to you in your grieving time.” Because  of this, we may need to redefine what is normal for us and choose some new best friends – friends who are willing and able to walk alongside us on our personal journey of grief and who will allow us to determine when our “time’s up.”

Doing Time

Grief may make us feel imprisoned in our version of hell. We won’t like who we are. We won’t like that our loved one has gone. We won’t like it that our friends can’t make us feel better. We just want out of here, and we’re not sure we want to do the work that grief requires in order to be set free from his bondage. Some of us will remain in this uncomfortable place for a short time while others of us feel like we have been given a longer sentence.

Wasting Time

Though, in real life, I pride myself on being a master at multitasking, in the land of grief, I’m much less sure of myself. I find it hard to make decisions because, in my situation, I don’t trust myself to make the right choice. I want someone else to be responsible if something goes wrong. Sometimes, my wasting time is about not having the energy to get started. I am physically exhausted, and my body refuses to make an effort to reclaim my former self. And I admit, quite frankly, that I’m not sure I even care enough about anything to make the effort. What’s the use, since it seems like everything I love sooner or later gets taken away from me?

Looking Back In Time

When we grieve, we spend most of our time, at least at first, looking back. It seems safer that way. That’s where our missing loved ones are. If we were to look forward, that would mean we would have to imagine our lives without those we have lost. And that’s what we aren’t ready to accept – not yet. So we spend a lot of time thinking how we should have been able to prevent their dying or wondering if we used our time with them well, as we remember the good times, bad times, silly and sad times. We think we have to keep those memories in front of us, or surely we will forget those whom we have lost.

First Times

It is natural for us to gauge our life after a loss as we anticipate and then go through the first times – the first day; the first week; the first month; the first time we venture out in public; the first time we went back to school, or church, or work; the first summer; the first Christmas; the first vacation; the first time we laughed. These first times are like benchmarks – notches in our belt that prove we are surviving when we weren’t sure we wanted to or didn’t know we could.

Dinnertime

There’s an empty chair at the table. There’s the conversation that seems to be just noise, having little to do with the absent one about whom we are all thinking but not daring to speak. We still prepare more food than we now need because we haven’t yet figured out how to cook for one fewer person. Sometimes, the food seems to have no taste and is not able to do what we want it to do – to fill that huge hole within us.

Time Out

Sometimes, what we need to do is to take a time out from our regular activities to reflect on what has happened to our personal world as we knew it before our great loss. To do so is not to run away from life but simply to realize that to act as if nothing has happened doesn’t work. This loss is too big to allow us to pretend that is hasn’t had a big impact on us. It’s the quiet time, when we shut off your thinking and empty out the chatter in our head, that healing begins. Other will have to be OK with our need to bow out for a while. Remember that, during grief, our job is to take care of ourselves, not to take care of our friends. When it’s time to re-enter a normal routine, it’s our choice what we will reinstate and what we decide to lay aside. Loss tends to redefine our priorities. What  used to be important may not be as important now. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Time Heals What Reason Cannot

In the end, time will change things. The intensity we experience when grief is new, when we can see nothing but loss and when every moment is filled with thoughts of the loved one who died, will gradually diminish and become softer. Time forces the big picture of life back into our vision, whether we like it or not. This happens in our lives all the time. Remember how, when we first fell in love with someone, we were totally preoccupied with only that other person, until, gradually, a more balanced existence was restored. Or when we did (what we thought was) some terrible thing and we were sure everybody would never let us forget it, we came to find out a few months down the road that most people had forgotten the incident.

In the months (maybe years) following a loss, life will eventually start to re-emerge, and life on this planet will once again seem possible. This will not happen because we come to understand the death more clearly but because, with the passage of time, the unanswered questions will become easier to live with,

Time will not remove grief entirely. The scars of grief will remain and we may find ourselves ambushed by a fresh wave of grieve at any time. But needing to know the answers to the “why” questions won’t seem quite so important as it once was.

Time is a gift that we have taken for granted. We’ve been given our lives one moment at a time. That is good.

Ron Metcalf can be contacted at Metcalf Mortuary 435-673-4221.