Chapter 22: Grief is Like…

Now that this experiment of documenting our story is nearing the end, it seems like I still have a hard time describing what I am feeling. Somehow I thought it would be easier, like a faucet that starts until it is overflowing the container. Maybe grief is like that – we hold it all inside until the drips crest over the top and need to pour down our outsides for a bit.

Referring back to my catalyst for this project, the perfectly powerful conversation between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert on All There Is podcast, Stephen says grief is like a beloved tiger. Here are his words:

Stephen Colbert

00:30:40

You know, I want to say something about living with grief. It occurred to me as as we’re telling these stories to each other, I feel like there’s physically a thing in the room with us right now, or at least with me to my right. I don’t know why to my right, but there’s a physically a thing over here and it’s kind of a dangerous thing. It’s like living with a beloved tiger. And it’s that feeling. It’s that grief. There are times when it is when I say grateful for it. I don’t want to say that it’s no longer a tiger. It is. And it can really hurt you. It can surprise you. It can pounce on you in moments that you don’t expect. Or at least that’s my experience. I don’t, I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s my tiger. And I wouldn’t want to get rid of the tiger. I have such a relationship with it now and. I just want to be clear that it’s painful. And it’s going to live as long as I do.

© 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Audio’s transcripts

Part of me wants that tiger to be Hobbes, the faithful sidekick to Calvin, who leaps out of nowhere and acts fierce, but is really like a trusty stuffy that you can’t live without. More likely, the tiger is related to the one from Kate DiCamillo’s The Tiger Rising. It is restless and pacing and ready to escape, but also easy to empathize with it for not being free. hmmm…

When my mother died, a kind and thoughtful colleague described grief like a ball in a box. The pain center can easily get triggered as the ball moves around and life moves on, but over time the ball gets smaller and somewhat manageable. Perhaps I’m moving into that stage. Hospice and church and others have provided me with plenty of other pamphlets and brochures and letters to read when I need support or words. The giant stack of sympathy cards is right under those booklets, within my reach right as I write this.

Maybe explaining grief is like mailing a sympathy card – it has all the emotions and intents, but hard to know how to express them adequately. But the thought and the heart does shine through, and hopefully my writing helps shed that light as well.

there’s a lot to mention in this picture:
chair was from J’s life before me and a favorite spot for me to read
cards and resources to share sympathy and grief
pillow is a joint creation of my mother and grandmother
shawls are from church following the funerals of my mother and grandmother
and of course the beloved tiger

Note: This is a slice of a story this month I’ve started calling Good Grief as a way to document some moments with my wife before she passed away in Sept 2023. Feel free to scroll back and see the rest of the story.