Grief

I’m going to write about grief. Now, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to say here and what I mean to accomplish. But I do know that what I say is going to resonate with an aggrieved soul somewhere and that is all that I need to know.


My grief has a vague starting point. Was it when I heard the news? Or was it when I said the goodbye, knowing inexplicably that it was going to be the final one? Or do I trace it back to the periodic realizations of the inevitable loss I would have to face one day? I do not know- it was all of this and much more that contributed to the build up of the dam that has now let go. Before I lead you in any further, I will tell you in summary what this is about: I had a dog and it, she, died. That is all there is to it, if I were to disengage myself from my emotion for a bit, that is all the story has to it. But, alas, being alive and vulnerable to all the experiences life has to offer, I cannot disengage myself from the countless fleeting seconds of joy that filled up and up the cup of my being and left it perilously tilted.


It is not my intention to romanticize my grief, to make it a muse for morose poetry or a scalpel to extricate the complicated darkness of the human soul. It is only because of the relatively sunny disposition of this day’s morning that I have found the will to stand away from my grief, for just a while, and examine it. There is nothing romantic about grief anyway, as any body who has been down in it’s depth can testify. It strikes heavily, leaving you panting for mercy, panting for a way out, panting and sweating while your heart shudders and your voice fails. There is nothing romantic about grief.


So, let me begin at when I heard the news. I was home after six months; I couldn’t wait to see her. Instead, I saw tears in my father’s eyes when I asked for her. Yes, it would make sense to mark that as the beginning of my grief. Only, it wasn’t. My grief started the moment I had kissed her goodbye because, you know, life has no guarantees and I was going far, far away. I missed her terribly from that moment on. I missed my home, yes, and my parents too- but nothing as desperately and intensely as I missed the touch of her coat and the warmth of her eyes. But amidst all the eye moistening memories and longings, I clung on to the idea of a future reunion. The phone calls made it better. Sometimes in love it is enough to know that the other is happy.


Now, I don’t have that respite. She is gone. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or anything spiritual for that matter, and I can’t come to terms with her death. The grief makes me want to stay in bed all the time, all the time conjuring imagery from the past to make me surrender in guilt, remorse and sorrow. It makes me question life, my existence and my inexplicable fortune to be in existence when she is not. This is not an exaggeration, dear reader, this is what goes on in my head as a consequence of loss. You cannot imagine what all will be lost with the death of a beloved. Though these are just the thoughts which, in due course of time I have learned, grief brings along to torture us, in those initial days I drowned myself in them, crying for meaning, crying for redemption.


I turned to my parents first. They were heartbroken, too. But they had spirituality to guide them through it- they had recited the Gita into her ears and were sure she was in heaven. They had done their duty to prod her soul gently into the beyond. They were heartbroken and sad, but they had done their duty and it alleviated their suffering. But, no, they would not get another dog now.


I turned to my friends. They sympathized and held me while I cried. They listened to me patiently and tried valiantly. But how can I ask them to help me fight against something they cannot fully understand or imagine? Sure, I have lost family before. Sure, they must have, too. But, what is the appropriate code of conduct when that family is canine?They do not know the depth of my grief and I do not know the depth of their understanding of it.


Religion, family, friends- none served my purpose. So, I turned to my grief. I had contacted an online support group and they told me not to resist the grief. They told me it was the price I had to pay for being human and of being capable to build the lovely bond that we had had. They told me that this grief was the final frontier of our journey and I had to hold on. They told me that in the end, I would be rewarded with something beautiful that I could cherish for the rest of my life.


So, I turned to my grief and decided to plunge into it’s pools.


Grief has no constant current: it ebbs and falls. You begin to realize the pattern once you let yourself go with the flow. You begin to realize the difference between grieving and being melancholy. The melancholy is the lowest the grief will depress you but it will also, at times, leave you with enough breathing space to be smiling. Then, there’s the anxiety, the unfounded feelings of foreboding, the deep breathing and staying still till your heartbeats return to normal. But, the worst are the memories, memories of the previous night’s dream that your mind plays relentlessly with the sun rise, invoking grief at the stroke of dawn. It is okay. It is okay to not want to move for a while, to just let the tears flow. It is okay to let the grief take over. Grief has not a constant current.


Two months in and grief is like an old pest, still unwelcome but it’s presence somewhat expected and habitual. I wake up, make my bed, put my coffee to brew and wait, subconsciously, for it to peek through some long forgotten crevice. And as I reach for the cookies on the top shelf, a couple of them slip and fall to the ground and I can almost feel her, head rubbing gently against the back of my exposed shins, gobbling up the unexpected treats. Thus, grief joins me for coffee.


I am waiting now for the support group’s promises to come true. I want to be happy for all the love she gave me but I can’t right now. So, I will wait and wade through the grief her death left behind. I imagine that one day it will stop hurting enough for me to actually look back and appreciate her for the beautiful thing she was and not for the void she left behind. That is the goal and till then, the grief will have to stay.