What do you do with grief that feels gray?
Which compartment do you stuff it in when it’s not black, suffocating, agonizing, blaring, or concrete? Is there such a thing as “gentle grief?” Can it even be called “grief” if your heart still feels settled in your chest?
What do you do when grief is more vaporous than consuming, when some days feel normal and others feel like you’ll never know normal again, even though you can’t pinpoint why.
Is it possible for grief to feel more like boredom, listlessness, irritability, or disdain for the world while simultaneously aching for someone, anyone, to call—even though you know you’ll never actually answer?
Could it manifest itself in barely snarky comments? Subtle criticisms? Silently passed judgments? Hidden expressions of cynicism? Mental scorekeeping? Underhandedly competing with people you love? The generic feeling that you’re just not quite yourself, and, come to think of it, you can’t really even remember what yourself feels like?
Might it feel like staring off into space, getting stuck, and never wanting to return because you just can’t figure out what’s worth returning to?
Do the low-grade, dull, murky days of not-good-but-not-bad eventually string together enough to tip the scales one way or the other? Or do you just ramble on indefinitely, nondescriptly, glazed-over, and shuffling?
What if you’ve only partially lost something—a marriage or spouse that isn’t entirely dead, only halfway? What do you do when your once lover and best friend has morphed into a congenial roommate (but at least they still help with the bills), or when your life partner is still physically present but mostly absent, thanks to their disease, an over-exacting work schedule, or an all-consuming relationship with their phone? What if the children aren’t estranged—they’ve only started college? What if they remember to call, but only on major holidays? Or if your parents were “good enough”—not really abusive but never fully present? Or if your child was never acutely sick but also never “normal” enough to visit a friend’s house (because they never had any), attend a birthday party, or dance at their senior prom?
What do you do with the “soft” grief, not over what is, but what isn’t, what never was, what never will be—the child you lost, despite the fact you have several beautiful, thriving others, the parent you’ll never have, the mother you’ll never be, the book you couldn’t quite stomach writing, the career path that just never panned out, the brilliant idea that lacked only courage, the relationship that never fully unfolded (even though you knew it was doomed from the start)?
This low-lying grief makes one squirm more than cry—perhaps tear ducts have been desiccated for many moons. Now, all that remains visible are uninterpretable expressions and ghostlike movements—remnants of the previous whole.
Such grief extends the allure of flight over fight; suddenly, a new vacation, haircut, kitchen gadget or outfit seems paramount, nothing other than a beer will quench your thirst, and the Taco Bell drive-through is screaming your name. Anything sounds better than remaining where you are, as you are. Even so, you just can’t summon the energy to do much of anything at all—like clean the house, shower, pick up that one thing on the floor you’ve been stepping over for days, or even recall what motivation feels like.
So you just…keep…drifting…
What do you do when the tried-and-true grief books use words that are too strong, too dramatic, too everything; but anything less feels overly trite and tidied, and the bullet-pointed twelve steps and cheery clichés make you nauseous?
What do you do with grief that feels gray?
Perhaps we don’t have language for this type of “gentle” grief because we never sit with it long enough to unpack it; we’re too busy squirming in discomfort, imagining the vacations we’ll never take, scheduling that life-changing haircut, scrolling online for new clothes (because who actually wants to put on real clothes to go to a real store?), or getting drunk and falling asleep to the glow of the tv.
Or perhaps we can never find the right words because we lack friends to ask the right questions or sit with us through our long, uncomfortable lapses of silence.
But maybe, just maybe, we don’t really want to know the root of this gentle grief. Maybe we prefer to ignore it. Pretend it’s not there. If we don’t acknowledge it, does it even exist? In the ambiguous “out there,” our marriage is still technically intact, our spouse is still living and breathing in the next room, our children are thriving in college (despite spending each weekend doing God-knows-what), our parents still love us in theory, our jobs are still spitting out biweekly paychecks. “Out there,” our dreams still live.
Yet I wonder, what would it be like to slowly unwrap this gray grief with soft hands? To peel back one piece at a time like tape on a meticulously wrapped gift, without frantically ripping it to shreds? What if we carved out time to admit our sadness and examine it—peeling back the surface one square inch at a time, acknowledging what is, what aches, what is present? What would it be to cherish not only the boxed gift, but the trimmings that conceal it?
What if the wrappings of grief are the gift?
This seems impossible, ludicrous, and to those who are grieving, maybe even profane. But for myself, I am considering it as possibly true.
Most days, the average American floats about in the illusory world of social media, consumerism, capitalism, and the never-ending quest for more. But despite its many downsides, “gray grief” draws me back like an anchor to the depths. It reminds me of the invisible, the intangible, the real.
We humans are in constant search of the real; however, we mistakenly believe that real equates to tangible. “If it is real, I can touch it, grab it, hold it, possess it,” we say. We crave concise conclusions that make sense of our emotions, a certain diagnosis that almost relieves our symptoms better than a cure, the assurance of an immutable future that won’t disappear like a mirage the moment we draw near, proof that love will be there when we wake.
Yet the truly real things of life must be approached, as the mystics of old say, by unknowing. If the Divine can more accurately be understood by all it is not, might not the same hold true for our souls? Despite my craving for black-and-white, absolute knowledge, might life’s path not be obscured in the gray?
I don’t like this answer. Actually, I loathe it. It feels like an evasive philosophical manipulation of words. A non-answer.
Still, I am thinking it’s true.
But I don’t like what it requires of me: patience, lingering, stillness, waiting. Those things feel “yucky,” for lack of a better word; they make me squirm.
Yet the real non-answer is the cultural one—the one that screams that I should do anything other than what I’m doing: Get busy! Go shopping! Drink! Tune out! Escape!
Perhaps instead, I will get busy slowly peeling back the tape, the layers, the gray and gentle grief…
