Grieving the invisible
Sometimes, when a person dies, it’s easier to name our reaction as a form of grief. It’s tangible, visible, event-specific. It’s community-sanctioned. Sometimes though, grief arrives in less visible packages. We may not even name it because it’s so hidden–the death of a dream that we had just begun giving ourselves permission to hold, the hope of a certain professional future dashed by not being offered the coveted job. This is “intrapsychic grief,” the often invisible loss of “what might’ve been”. Sometimes, it’s so quiet–the repeated negative pregnancy tests while peers post happy birth announcements, the medical diagnosis that isn’t cancer but it’s definitely something–enough that your future is now under revision, but to what form is still TBD. Maybe it’s coming to terms with a complicated relationship. There’s no Meal Train for this grief. It’s not a question your friends and family know to ask, or even know is something to ask about. Maybe it’s so subterranean, you don’t even know it’s a thing until you witness someone else’s grief, and you’re incomprehensibly moved.
Even a person’s death can be complicated–how do you grieve the life of someone who didn’t get a “full” life, for whatever reason? Do you rage at the unjust systems that caused this premature death? At the person who died? How do you make peace with your relationship with this person? How do we value a life–what standards do we measure it against? What is lost that cannot be named? What is the future this person’s family cannot hope for? Will they be seen in the vastness of their grief?
Major life changes often activate intrapsychic grief, confronting us with the past, present, and future all at once. Maybe the community you thought you were inextricably part of no longer holds you. The path you were on is obliterated, forcing you to recalibrate, re-evaluate the beliefs you were once rock solid on, and re-set your compass towards a yet-to-be-discovered future. Who are you when what you knew was true is no longer true?
As I go deeper into my own grief, I am confronted with our limited language for its wide expression. Anticipating the deaths of our elders, facing our own mortality when illness or injury besets us–all this breaks open the reality of our powerlessness. We make plans, knowing that they can be upturned at a moment’s notice. We show up for the ones who matter because that’s the only thing we can count on. We love, knowing that our loved ones will die. We love, even if sometimes that love is not reciprocated. There is grief there, too. It is a high price for being human, and I have no easy salve. Except to remind you–you are not alone. We are all human and coming to terms with losses. Perhaps as we realize this, we can journey alongside each other with greater care.
