Closure (Day 370)

Every grieving person has to process three fundamental questions:  1) Why did this happen?; 2) How long will I feel this way?; and 3) Will I ever be normal (happy) again? 

For most of us, we can never really answer the “why” question; but it is where we begin to process the raw pain and anger we are left with after the trauma of loss.  So, the very first lesson in grief is that there are not answers to every question!  Acceptance of this reality is crucial to moving forward.  Like a pressure cooker, there are two methods of relieving the pressure at the end of the cooking cycle: slow release and rapid release.  For some, the process of moving from the initial shock and denial to acceptance is a long gradual process, and for others, it is a rapid and noisy, almost violent, purge.   Both methods end up at the same place - a kind of quasi-equilibrium between denial and acceptance - which is the beginning of the process of learning to accept the loss and start separating from the past reality.  

It is here that we start asking the second question: how long will I feel this way?  I believe there must be some correlation between the length and quality of time spent together before the loss and the time it takes to navigate this middle part of the journey from looking back to “before” to moving forward to “after”.  Unlike the first question, the “how long” question does have an answer.  Quite simply, it takes as long as it takes. 

Time has a dual effect of softening the pain and sadness of loss while also tempering the heart like a blacksmith working a sword.  A profound loss strips us down to the most basic, weakened, and vulnerable state.  Grief is the process that rebuilds us from the wreckage into something new, perhaps different, and hopefully stronger than before. 

Somewhere along the way, there is a fundamental change from backward-looking sadness to forward-looking hope and optimism. It is in this moment that we realize the reality that not only does “life go on” without the one who was lost, but that there are also possibilities of happiness in new and different ways. 

I think there is a distinction between the end of grief (which may never fully happen) and closure, which is the nexus between the old normal with someone who is gone and a new normal with that person’s memory.  We will never forget the person who was lost, and we will never be the same as we were before the loss.  But through the process of grief, we are re-assembled and made stronger in preparation for whatever comes next.