Grief: Loud, Soft, Invisible

Content warning: This article discusses various deaths. There are no explicit details, but it does briefly mention death by disease and by suicide, as well as natural causes.

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Grief is not monolithic. There is no one way that grief presents itself, especially not when it comes to expressing it over loss and death. When people imagine a funeral they tend to envision choked up sobs, weeping and tearful goodbyes. People expect grief to be visible. This isn’t the case, however; as there are billions of unique individuals, so are there many unique ways of expressing grief.

I have seen a lot of loud grief in my regular life as well as during my time working in a funeral home. I’ve seen a person crumble and burst into tears when she heard the news that an old friend (both in age and in time known) had a stroke and passed away suddenly. Her voice breaking and her eyes welling up made me feel as if I were being suffocated. I’ve heard a mother and father wail as they look into the casket at their child who had taken his own life. I could hear them through the whole building. I’ll never forget the sound of their voices, how many times they said “I’m sorry” and “I love you”.

Grief can be incredibly loud. It can make you feel like you’re engulfed in flames or like you’re drowning and like the only way to make it all stop is to let it all out. Plenty of people grieve like that. They release all their emotions to kindle a catharsis, which tends to help them be able to find a way to live a life without the person that they’ve lost.

Grief can also be quiet. Sometimes when you feel like you’re drowning, it’s as if there is something deeper down wanting to wail and give a release, but whenever you try to shout your voice is muffled by the water around you. Sometimes grief simply envelops you, holds you tight or sits heavy on your shoulders. Quiet grief can often be (though isn’t always) accompanied with feelings of guilt. Shouldn’t we cry over our loved ones? Shouldn’t I be able to muster a few tears over someone who mattered so much to me? But of course, grief and emotions are not that simple. Quiet grief may be looking up at your father, stoic-faced except for his quivering lip, and seeing that he's breaking. It may be always choosing to donate at checkout to the hospital that treated your friend before they passed. It may be returning to the burial site after the funeral is over just so you can talk to them alone. There are many ways to show grief in ways that are much less tempestuous than weeping.

And despite their differences, the different ways of grief are all valid.

Even when you’re not sure if you’re feeling any grief at all.

Sometimes loss hits you but you don’t feel that stickiness in your throat that accompanies crying, nor do you feel as if you should write condolences on the memory wall of their obituary. The loss comes and sets in and where you expect grief you simply have a void. It’s not as if this means you feel nothing at all towards the death, it simply means that grief isn’t the way to process it, or that your brain isn’t quite sure what to do with the information. This person we knew and cared for is gone, and things will never quite be the same. But now what?

With this uncertainty often comes guilt as well. People who have this void, this empty shell, of reaction often feel like something is wrong or that maybe they didn’t care about the decedent as much as they thought they did. Don’t let yourself be fooled during this incredibly vulnerable and confusing time of loss. There is loud and quiet grief, sure, but invisible grief exists too. It appears like a hollow shell where grief should be– a shell full of used tissues, and flowers, and memory cards– but something empty is not the same as something nonexistent. Your invisible grief may be keeping a picture of you two together in your wallet, even though you never explain to anyone else what it means. It may be going to a museum and seeing a fossil of their favorite dinosaur, and smiling just a little as you remember them. It may be keeping your front yard full of hummingbird feeders. The people around you may not know you’re grieving, some other foolish and hurting people may demand you show more emotion, but you are allowed to grieve in whatever way you are naturally inclined to do.

All grief, and all expressions or lack thereof, are valid and can help a person move forward. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Some forms of mourning are accompanied by other negative feelings, or act as fuel for negative behavior, but grief is not permanent. Grief is not you, nor is it a measure of your love or relationship with whoever you lost. Grief is simply a means of moving forward.