Letters from Skiff Mountain: Many different, personal ways to grieve
Dear friends,
When I see a young couple holding hands I smile, but I have a shameful confession: When I see an older couple holding hands, I feel the shame of envy.
How do men and women cope with loss of a partner? In the same way or differently? Perhaps the process is universal while yet unique for each person, regardless of gender. I wonder, if we allowed ourselves to accept the universality of grief, maybe we could support each other more wisely.
Men suffer loss as acutely as women even if they have been taught to express their feelings differently, or preferably not at all. With a stiff upper lip! Take it like a man! Don’t be a girly!
On the other hand, women too often believe in the myth off unending resilience and magical ability to adapt to any change. How often do we hear that women get on with their lives, ‘soldiering on’, while men just “fall apart” until they can find another woman?
Over the years I have seen both men and women in the despair of loss. The myths do not hold. Each man or woman grieves in his or her own way, each within their own time frame.
Both men and women weep. Some scream into the hollow of a lonely, un-answering night. Some cook, some clean, some let it all go for a while. Some find a new partner soon and others never again. Some join groups and others the church. Others find yoga or meditation. As many as there are people so there are solutions to grieving.
For most though, there comes a morning, unexpectedly, with trepidation, when the time seems right to start rebuilding again.
We may begin by moving furniture, or being able to give away the beloved’s clothes. This leaves a half-empty closet to fill with a change of style, perhaps a brighter color. We might return to our work or leave it to embrace an old, almost forgotten, desire. Excited by such changes, there is also the feeling of fear, of having betrayed memory: Do we have the right to change?
The work of healing is personal. There are no guidelines, no correct rules to follow, in spite of all the books written on grief and grieving. Grief is a tricky emotion catching us so often off guard. We can be laughing with true pleasure and then the tears will come, unexpected and real as the laughter. Grief, like the ocean waves, can be ever so gentle and then suddenly knock us down.
It took me several years before I had the courage to throw out his favorite Italian leather couch. I had always disliked it. I called Welsh Sanitation to remove it.
I smiled when the truck arrived, feeling elated, with almost a sense of a freedom — at doing what I wanted. The men carted out the couch, and I watched as the truck’s mouth mauled it, reducing it in small bites, until nothing of it remained. I felt horrified — what had I done? Yet when I went back in the house the living room seemed so refreshingly serene.
A new mattress took me three more years; what I could not throw away was my husband’s old red velour L.L. Bean bathrobe.
I arrived at Ellis Island in the winter of 1939 wearing a brown mouton lamb fur coat. My parents soon bought me a snow suit with leggings. My mother wanted to donate the fur coat. I convinced her it would make a lovely cover for my doll’s bed, but the truth was, I was afraid to sleep alone in my room. I tied a cloth belt around the coat and made it my bedfellow. I slept with ‘her’ for a long time.
Eleven years ago, when my husband died, I folded up his red robe, tying it into a bundle with its velour belt, and kept it close in my bed. It was only many months later that I hung the robe back on the door hook where it had always hung, and still hangs to this day.
Now I look in the mirror and see an old woman. A momentary sense of disbelief. The feeling passes. I smile, pat my white hair in place and leave for my drumming group in Lakeville.
It would be nice to have an arm to hold.
Letters from Skiff Mountain: Many different, personal ways to grieve was first published in The Lakeville Journal Company newspapers, TriCorner News.
