It will be Ruby's 17th birthday next week. I think about her every day. These days I forget that I have thought about her after the thought. It used to be that, when I thought about Ruby, strong emotions would overwhelm me and I knew for hours after that she had been in my mind. I felt the aftershocks, ripples. Then after some more months and years thoughts of Ruby would instead leave a tracer like a radioactive isotope, a half-life of a few hours then eventually just an hour then, at last, minutes. Now, five and a half years after she died, I forget I have had thoughts about her after the thought occurred.
And that's what mostly happens now- the thoughts occur. Thoughts of Ruby used to crash into my consciousness, chaotically destroying any mental work I had managed but now they just occur. I am, these days, gently reminded of her or maybe I will let myself think of her at times I am less vulnerable (after exercise, say, or when I am having one of those little phases of joy here and there) or maybe an old friend will remind me of that time Ruby found a joke funny and we smile together without pathos.
It is a fortunately rare occurrence that violently strong thoughts of grief punch me in the guts and leave me breathless and it always happens from a spontaneously triggering experience. One morning recently Claire told me she dreamt about Ruby (neither of us ever dream about Ruby) and that she dreamt she was stroking her face. Immediately I was struck with rising anxiety, nausea and a physical pain in my chest- I have an immensely clear memory of the feel of Ruby's hair on my face and Claire's dream caused a type of flashback that felt as real as real hair brushing my face. It felt like Ruby was suddenly there with us and I was resting my cheek on her head and I knew, I absolutely knew with the certainty of my own skin on my own bones, that her hair was touching my face. And then I had to suddenly also know that she had died and I had to suddenly know I was without her. The rest of my day was blurry and actionless and I floated around powered by poignancy. I was suffused with otherness until medication helped me sleep that night. My powerlessness lasted one full day and then I jogged, I cooked, I loved, I read and I did all those things I know help and then normality, of a type, returned.
The world of the bereaved is suffused with otherness- living life a few inches to the left, needing to squint to focus, the requirement to tilt my torso and adjust my head ever so slightly to get the view others receive unfailingly. Colours are never quite right, they need more light or maybe they are washed out. Circles are oval, edges too sharp. Tactility is squishy or painfully hard.
Bereaved people are acutely aware of their perceived exertion as comparable with others' objective view of their work. And like an athlete in training for a marathon astutely analysing their own body's work rate, the bereaved person knows their exertion level and its relation to reality.
Sometimes my thoughts love the sound of their own voice, circulating round and round, not letting me in, the conscious me who wants to rationalise and interact. They can be obsessively self-centred and exclusionary. At other times it is hard to break out from their tyranny, the sporadic carapace of grief, I can be imprisoned. But everything passes.
By their very nature anxiety and depression are rational, as is grief. But grief is so much more. It is anxiety and it is depression- normal reactions to unusual circumstances- but it is also post-trauma learning, it is untreatable because it is a sign of wellness not illness, it is an endeavour from which we can learn the importance of things. Grief explains to us the ephemerality we are chained to and maybe provides a reason and eventual escape- it is a reminder of how deep we loved someone.
This is the bittersweet nature of grief- we are sad because we were happy. We are broken-hearted because we loved. A key navigation skill along the road of grief is to shed the burden of what we have lost and instead look to the love we held so close and to celebrate the joy we had. Grief is the ultimate lesson in why, and how, we love.
