Fresh Start Fitness

The first time I met Grief, I was fifteen years old and was just told that my dad had died instantly in a car accident. Grief has a tangible feeling of heaviness: like an invisible backpack filled with rocks that makes it hard to breathe, think, or move.

I experienced Grief again when I lost pregnancies, when my oldest son was diagnosed with a chronic disease, and when my middle son experienced a brain injury during birth. The same feeling of a heavy load of rocks, a dark cloud that follows wherever you go, an inability to connect with people and things around you.

Grief subsides over time. Little by little, one rock at a time, is removed from the backpack and one day you notice that you’re carrying a lighter load. People and faces are sharper and in better focus. You feel present where your feet are planted. The pain changes from searing, to aching, to manageable.

When I look back on the Grief I experienced when I lost my dad, I remember that it was heaviest in the beginning, when the pain of losing him was new: I just saw him this morning… I just saw him yesterday… I just saw him last week… and now I reflect on Grief with a strange nostalgia. Grief was with me during that time. Heavy, but oddly comforting and familiar like a weighted blanket. A tangible and important piece of evidence: this person mattered to me.

Grief is the outcome of a life filled with love. It hurts to lose someone we love, to lose the hope of someone we love like a precious tiny baby we have not yet met. It hurts to watch those we care for suffer and experience disease and hardship. It hurts to experience betrayal, divorce, and heartbreak. But in all these things, Grief can remind us that we have loved well. We opened our hearts and allowed ourselves to be impacted by the love that we shared. Our suffering has meaning and our pain has purpose: evidence that they mattered and their presence made a difference in our lives.