Beautiful Flowers and A Grieving Heart

Trigger Warning: This post contains a conversation about suicide.

The sun is shining on my back as I write this. There is a soft cool breeze, an airplane passing overhead, birds chirping, and the sound of Dougie walking through leaves nearby. My heart doesn’t know how to write, how to form sentences, and coherent thoughts. Grief, for me, feels like a heaviness. I’ve described it as walking through water, everything just takes more effort than normal. That’s not a perfect metaphor, because my arms feel heavy and weighty even when I’m not moving, and my heart feels heavy too. My brain feels slower connecting two thoughts or two dots is so much harder than normal.

I’m learning that grief doesn’t look the same for everyone, even when we are grieving a similar loss. Even my own grief feels weird and unfamiliar. Manifesting feelings of weightiness and heaviness one moment, but feeling normal another moment, wanting to feel sad in another but not being able to conquer feelings at a meer whim.

I guess I should back up a step and say why I’m grieving. My dear friend Emily died of suicide recently. She had been battling depression and anxiety for a very long time. She was in my inner circle of friends. I’m not sure there’s been a more appropriate time in my life to use the word, devastated. I’m devastated by this loss.

The pictures in this post are either from Gibb’s gardens, my backyard, or the Silver Comet trail, Rockmart trail entrance. I’ve had this set of pictures for a while now, but I never had enough words, enough “content” to make an actual post. Emily was an artist. She loved beautiful things in that special way only one who loves art can. Flowers being something she would paint or gather, as well as something one gives at a funeral feels rather appropriate for this post. Perhaps, much better than the stray ideas I had come up with before.

My previous idea was to start the post with the sentence: “Fred has really changed the way that I see the world. It’s only been a few weeks, but I see the flowers and the trees and the sky in a whole new light!” This is my attempt at humor because Fred is what I have named my camera. The battery is Bertha, and the backup batteries are the twins. I was going to follow up with the sentence “don’t get too excited, Fred is my camera, not a new boyfriend.” I can’t remember if I told Em this joke, but I know she would have at least given me a pity laugh. I also know that I got the quirky idea to name my camera from being friends with Emily. She definitely approved of me naming my camera.

It’s true that the camera changed the way I looked at the world and look for colors and contrast and lighting. It’s a bit heartbreaking to think that not long ago I was thinking about my blog, what to say, wondering if I make a post about Denver before the flowers, does that somehow ruin the integrity of the blog, since it wouldn’t be in order? I was flying back home and thinking about the drive and how tired I’d be once I got home. My headspace mere weeks ago was so different, so normal.

When I landed for my layover in Baltimore from Denver a text came up on my phone from Emily’s sister. She asked me to call her when I could. I knew Emily, I knew her struggles, and I knew this text would be bad news. I maybe arrogantly thought, Emily might need me. I need tomorrow off work, or to go straight to her instead of home. I should call and find out what has happened.

So I made the call from the airport. Her sister asked me if I was sitting down and then told me the news that we had lost Emily. My brain didn’t really believe it, but tears were instantly in my eyes. I didn’t say much on that phone call – I guess there wasn’t much to say.

My friend who was traveling with me came back from the bathroom. She knew Emily too. I told her through the tears and then continued to cry. It’s odd how the body works. My professor Doug Shirely says our bodies are always the first and last to know something. In my mind, this news didn’t feel real. She must just be in a hospital. This was not supposed to happen. Despite my brain denying reality, the tears didn’t stop.

A kind man in the airport asked if I was okay. I nodded my head but didn’t stop crying. I thought wryly, at least my concussion got me used to crying in public. The man came over and offered me some of a roll of toilet paper to use for tissues. He told me to take as much as needed.

Small mercies, small mercies are what I look for right now. I am glad my friend was traveling with me, I’m glad the stranger cared that I was crying. I’m glad that my online counseling classes were on break when this happened.

I wrote the first half of this post about a week and a half after I had heard the news. It’s been almost four weeks now and I finally feel up to editing it and adding on.

My mom suggested I write a blog, what to say, and what not to say to people when they’re grieving. As I love being a know-it-all, I mean teaching, I decided to add a bit of that here.

A weird fact about me is that often in dark times I have brief vivid moments where I sense that I’m doing this really hard thing right or well. I felt that with depression and at times with the concussion depression. It sucked, I cried a lot, but I also went to a counselor, brushed my teeth, and called my people. I kept taking steps even when it was scary or hard.

In this grief, I knew that I wanted to feel sad. I wanted to cry and ask all the cliche hard-to answer questions. I reached out to so many friends because I’m an external processor. I asked them the hard questions: why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t she call someone? All the why questions and all of the what if’s. Questions that I might talk about more someday, but right now still feel too real and too raw.

I knew I needed the space to voice these questions. Now that I have, I think all the questions are less about answers and more about pain. I needed to and still feel the need to put words to all the hurt and pain inside me, all of the layers that come with grief. My friends helped me and help me by listening, by saying how hard this must be, by reminding me of how I’m a good friend to them and must have been to her as well. They don’t stop me from feeling the pain or try and invalidate it, they just hold it for me.

I grieve hard and in some ways fast. My brain works fast. I remember lots and lots of information and I tend to lean in when things get hard. The thing to remember about grief is that it’s different for everyone. I grieved in a way that fits my personality and my life story: external processor, logical, personal experience with depression, counseling student, a believer in being counter-cultural, etc. I live my life at about 99% stress level, so I had to scale back for a bit. I needed time off from work to grieve in this way. I ditched all my plans of reading before the semester, and I slept more and watched more television than I had in months.

A question that I got asked that I didn’t realize how healing it would be was the invitation to talk about my friend. People asked in a gentle and nondemanding way, “would you like to tell me what she was like?” I have hours and hours of stories and with her being at the front of my mind, it feels raw yet healing to describe her, to tell my stories. The response when I do is usually along the lines of “I can see how much you loved her” or “she sounds really wonderful.” These are helpful words to hear. My advice is to be genuine and be kind.

Another thing I knew I needed was to lay on my picnic blanket, listen to sad music, and cry. I love nature, I always loved Emily’s picnic blanket, and I knew the simplicity would make me feel close to her. I also found myself scrolling through her Instagram and her Facebook. I miss her voice in my life. I miss hearing her input when I panic message a group text thread about a stressful life event. Her social media allowed me to spend time with her voice, to think about the context behind the pictures only a good friend really knows. I sat down at some point and made some art inspired by her work and her style. I didn’t really do this intentionally, but the combination of the school I attend and thinking about Emily combined into art taking shape in my mind. These things were hard, they made my heart ache, and often the tears spill out, but in some small way they were cathartic, maybe even neccessary.

On the subject of what not to do to comfort someone in grief, I would say not to make assumptions. Listening is key. And don’t assume how the person is feeling or what the person needs to heal or grieve. Consider your relationship to the person grieving. If you don’t know them well and they’re in the middle of a task or trying to keep it together, that’s not a great time for condolences. Open an invitation to talk, but don’t feel bad if the grieving person doesn’t take you up on it, or if they do but it’s two weeks later.

I have friends who find the cliche of “she would have wanted ______,” really hard to swallow.

A big one for me is the word “choice”. I absolutely hate it when people say they are sorry my friend made that “choice.” I have a long mental health rant about the word, but for now let’s just say the topic of suicide holds a lot of stigma and the word choice is not great. Anyway, the word misses the point, I’m sad that my friend is gone. Does the way it happened make it harder? Maybe, I’m not sure I could ever know the answer to that. However, I would prefer if people would just say, I am really sorry for your loss.

And before you bring it up at all ask yourself, “am I offering condolences to be kind, or to make myself feel better?” If you aren’t close with a person or the timing is weird, it’s ok to wait, to send a text, an email, to talk to them after their shift, or on their break. The grieving person’s world has fallen apart, treat them with so much kindness.

Kindness is a notion I would like to end this post with, a helpful reminder that I have received from the counseling world is to be kind and gentle with myself. It’s okay to be low energy. It’s okay to take it slow, ask for what you need, and accomplish less than normal. Grief is heavy and hard and western culture doesn’t make much space for it.

Be kind and take up all the space you need.

Breathe in, and breathe out.

Take it one moment at a time,

and remember that you are loved.