NOPE, it’s not that English expression popularly used in the cartoon comics section long ago to denote a sense of exasperation. What I mean to refer to is the thin silver lining one tends to overlook when we grieve at the loss of a loved one.
Not that I intend to downplay the gravity of that loss. It’s just that, no matter how deep our sorrow is, surely there’s a certain comfort in the thought that, despite everything, all things, including grief, must pass and only we remain. While this may sound like a callous thing to say, precisely how we deal with that, especially in the middle of that storm, lingers as the only real dilemma.
I remember the time when we lost our mom in 2007; it so happened that I was the only one who couldn’t be physically present, as I was still in my second month overseas. My father had told me right away, it was alright to not fly home, as I would have to again go through stiff immigration processes, and besides, her wake was not going to take long. So, there I was, alone to deal with my silent grief. That was then.
It’s been more than a month now since my niece’s daughter passed on, and I still cannot imagine, much less fathom, just how devastating that was for her and her two remaining children, they being so far away from all of us.
I know how deeply we grieve as a family cannot possibly be equal to how she’s feeling, even up till now. It’s just as my mom had once aptly described to me, a few years before she left us. “One can never get over the loss of a son (or a daughter)”. She had to endure the deaths of two of our brothers many years back.
So, how to deal with this deep sorrow that doesn’t seem to leave? I would have to quote this verbatim from a passage I once read: “Grief is a very living thing. It visits at random. You can’t schedule it. I tried to work it away, I tried to drink it away, I booked myself like crazy. All it did was wait for me to finish. So when it shows up, however it shows up, just let it show up.”
Incidentally, no one can outrun one’s grief. No matter how one stayed busy to avoid its gripping silence, like a shadow, it’s always there … “as though sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for the moment I slowed down.” Simply put, it’s the type of ache you just cannot shoo away or ignore because it patiently waits for an unguarded moment. So when that moment comes, the most healing thing you can do is just let yourself feel it.
Out of all these, there’s another soothing perspective about losing some people we love. “One may not have fully spent their life with them, but without any doubt, they got to spend their life with you”. Missing Andrea.
