Tags

, , ,


Yesterday’s unimaginable shooting in Connecticut at an elementay school leaving twenty-eight dead, including twenty very small children has left this entire nation, if not the world, reeling in shock and horror. Even being someone who walks In Between, I am no less immune than anyone to the grief. With one of my children the age of the smallest victims and my other child the age of the shooter I can’t help but imagine what it would be like if it were one of my children involved. The agony of even imagining such a thing is unbearable. How much more must the reality of living it be???

While I would never, ever classify us as “on friendly terms”, grief and I have had a long established agreement. I have lived with and amongst grief for so long, there is a certain acceptance of it, for lack of a better word, and definately an understanding of the process. Sometimes when I’m talking to someone who is grieving, they’ll ask me how to get through each day…when the pain will stop, how long does it take, will life ever be the same again?

The answer, unfortunately is no. Life will never be the same again, it can’t be. Think of grief like a scar. It is a wound of the soul and heart. It will heal, in time, but the scar will remain always, the flesh be slightly altered, and on certain days and at certain times the pain will flare up. The way a broken leg will ache when the weather is damp, and make you walk a bit gimpy for a while. The trick, just as with the broken leg, is learning to adapt to your life with this new scar of the heart. Perhaps you can’t run as fast or jump as high, maybe when you kneel you have to stick one leg out a bit instead of resting on the knee. The heart similarly will find its own ways of adjusting to it’s new reality. But of course, this takes time. And time is what most people dont want to face, because time seems to go on forever and when you are in pain, forever is a very, very long time.

To help get through this time, I tell people to imagine their grief is a drink. Once you’ve encountered something that causes you to grieve, you have joined a sad exclusive club. Its a big club, there are lots and lots of people there. Animals too actually ( Animals grieve, dont tell me they dont, I’ve seen it). But you can’t get in without a ticket and the ticket is loss. This club, with lots of lots of members is one where everyone picks up a glass once they enter the door and they must carry it round with them the rest of their stay. At first, the grief in your glass is a shot of whiskey, strong, sharp, 30 year old Scotch, like a good McCallum perhaps. It burns when you drink it and you must drink it in one gulp of course. You cough, you sputter, your stomach heaves and your throat is scorched and sore. Your head instantly aches and the room spins. You may even throw up.

Over time the liquid in your glass, that glass you will be carrying from now on, is filled with wine. A good mellow merlot maybe, or syrah. It will still make your head swim, it will still leave an aftertaste, but you dont have to gulp it and it wont burn. And because you dont gulp wine, you sip it, the glass will be refilled much less often and you wont need to drink so very, very much of it all at once. You might even be able to set it down on a nearby table for brief periods of time. You’ll have to pick it up, of course, the next time the waiter comes round to refill it, but there will be those little breaks from time to time.

On this night when an entire nation is mourning I am picking up my glass, along with just about everyone else I expect. And to those who were directly affected by this awful tragedy and who have newly arrived at that sad exclusive club, I am raising my glass to you and if I could stand face to face with any or all of you I would say, “Please pour your grief into my glass. I am accustomed to the taste and burn of whiskey, let me drink yours for you.”

I will drink yours, and yours and yours and yours and yours until I drown in it….