A Grief Puzzle — Grateful, yet Grieving
After the sudden loss of my husband, I lacked the words to describe the grief. I sought out what I could see as a tool to begin the process. My phone captured the images as I took pictures. Buildings being demolished with rubble surrounding the space where there was once a structure became my starting point for where I was.
Another image I captured was a large tree that had been amputated on one side, leaving only the trunk and branches on the remaining side. As I looked at these visual images, I found an entrance into the unknown world of grief.
Beyond photos, I began looking for quotes and books on grief. I collected over 50 quotes in the first few months and read over 12 books on grief in the first year. Words helped me form the new landscape I found myself in. I was learning a new language, using pictures, then words, to describe a place where I had never been before.
One of the books I read was A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, which he wrote after the loss of his wife, Joy. He wrote, “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
When I read quotes like the one above, I always experience a “that’s it moment,” where I find another piece of the puzzle that fits together.
Someone else’s words become a way to traverse the rugged terrain of grief. Over time, words and pictures have created my personal geography of grief. My “map of sorrow,” as C. S. Lewis said, is being formed around the empty space.
What was once familiar and known is novel and different. How the world looked before our loss and how it looks now is a process of so many changes that came all at once. Like those puzzle pieces, we are trying to make it all fit. We are wise to be gentle and patient as we reconfigure our lives. Some pieces won’t fit the same way. It’s okay. We’ve never been here before.
