MAY 22
Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened up again;
the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the
stomach, the nightmare reality, the wallowed-in tears. For
in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a
phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything
repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
—C. S. LEWISIt comes without warning, the feeling of being plunged back
into the freshness of new grief—the same bewilderment, the
feeling of being disoriented, our life disorganized. Often we
don’t know just what has set us off again. And we thought
we were doing better!
The loved one we have lost has probably been with us for
a very long time, perhaps all of our life—as when a parent
has died. It is going to take us a long time to adapt to that
loss. It won’t happen smoothly, either, in some sort of
gradual uphill climb out of the valley of despair. It’s more
like the work of clearing a rock-strewn New England field.
With great labor the rocks are removed, but then the land
shifts, the seasons change, and new rocks work their way
to the surface. Eventually the land will be cleared, but it may
take a long time!
I will be gentle with myself, accepting these storms of the psyche
as part of my passage on the road to recovery.