Grief is a deeply personal and complex feeling.
"Sight is subjective”
Taye Selasi- Ghana must go
This suggests that there are two perspectives:those who have experienced it and those who haven't.
You haven't experienced grief
Grief, you believe can be embodied like a cloak to be removed at will just because it is untrue. Your circumstance doesn't align with the word grief. "Grief is not what I'm going through now but I'm trying to feel it to ascertain what it might be like to loose someone or something". You can never understand how someone else feels only if you have once truly experienced it and even if you have, people react to grief in different ways. You can't know the exact way someone is feeling so let's refrain from saying"I understand how you feel" because you simply can't. You can't claim to have touch grief's core- Chimamanda Adichie words.
You have experienced grief
The word grief sounds brief. Same as the thin line between life and death-brief and the switch from sanity to insanity -brief. However grief, when it occurs is not necessarily brief. In fact it is the opposite. Feeling and swimming in different emotions as you navigate the reason why something or someone of extreme value was taken from you whether the time is right or not. Chimamanda says Grief is the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief are lucky to have loved.
They say those who have felt grief experience the world in a different way. An author says "They involve a separation from home,a test of character and then a return home with new wisdom or strength".
….he said goodnight. His last words to me.On 10 June, he was gone. My brother Chuks called to tell me and I came undone. Chimamanda Adichie- Notes on grief
Stages of grief
Elizabeth Kubler Ross says grief is in stages- Denial and isolation,anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. David Kessler introduces the sixth stage- Finding meaning.
A couple- Tricia and Scott who had lost a daughter reflected with their therapist on the deep changes that had occurred in their view of life
Scott
There are so many things that we have really learned as a family and it is that there is a list of stuff that just doesn't matter.There are so many things that we stress over until we lose someone and then all of a sudden, everything has a new perspective, life has a new perspective.
Tricia
You value your friends more, you value your family more, you value the time you have together more, you try to make more special memories and remember those moments.
Grief is a cruel kind of education Chimamanda Adichie
Personal perspective on grief
Grief to me is the one way okada accident in Dugbe one dark night. A memory better imagined than spoken. An unpleasant one of my dad falling, something I'd never seen as the bike hit him.The torn super strika comic book stuck to the jagged coal tarred road- a new gift from ShopRite for passing my common entrance exam. Grief is the memory of me rolling in my saint Isabel uniform with reckless abandon in the drizzling rain. The feeling of being mortified oblivious to me. My joy turned sour in the blink of an eye.
I still haven't gotten over the recollections —the impassioned cries of passersby pleading with my dad's unconscious form, urgently tapping in an attempt to revive him. Yet, my focus was elsewhere, locked in a chant of "Jesus," echoing his usual response to adversity. His eyes fluttered open, and a momentary relief replaced the panic. Grief was that.
I still remember the rider's uncaring departure after a minute glance and the bitterness, the ire that lingered for a very long time in me.
Grief is the six hour brain surgery after the accident I dreaded ending and still anticipated it's ending.The cold iron chairs added to my discomfort and so my solace was the entrance of the UCH emergency ward where I saw patients who had unthinkable defaults. Something I can't unsee.
Grief is the news of my very first best friend's death. She came visiting the lonely big compound occupied by a four flat building. There I spent my lonely childhood days with Tom and Jerry and a big carton of Mount Zion movies. She was an old vibrant woman who didn't look like she had one hand on death's door handle. Our favorite game was pinchy pinchy. I enjoyed the slightly painful game of who could give the best pinch and when my six year old self couldn't take the pain anymore, my tear ducts would burst open and with a warm hug say “Chekwube, I thought we were playing na".
I'd later learn her name- Ogbueshi, one of the many Igbo words I struggle to pronounce just like "ogbogonogo".
Grief was my elder sister's return back to Lagos with her Rapunzel hair somewhere in the bin and her head almost scondos. I perceived her scent everywhere she had once been; the bed she slept in,the chair she sat in,the little clothes she "dashed" me. The ABC and 123 she scribbled on the big Jesus banner in the sitting room was read out aloud until my mom threatened me with a broom for my extremely enthusiastic high pitched voice. It was grief that goaded me during the slow lassitude of my childhood days.
Grief is the death of duke- my first and favorite dog who died quietly sprawled beside our generator house like he didn't want anyone bothered. When I felt his stiff body thinking it was one of his many playful acts, my heart bled like it had an impalement. I couldn't seem to unfeel it as I looked at the spot he was buried. A month later, a pineapple plant with a stunted growth produced a pineapple and don't blame me but I can't help but think he was trying to compensate for the grief he caused us.
In conclusion, grief is personal and can never be replicated by another being.