I don’t profess to be an expert on grief from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. I don’t hold a degree in psychology and although I could map out the ‘phases’ of grieving, I have no intention to. Anyone with access to a computer or a library can easily access the myriad of information out there that breaks grief down into stages in an extremely clinical way. When someone you love commits suicide, clinical information reads like nothing more than senseless jargon seemingly aimed at someone else. Letters at the end of someone’s name signifying a degree does not equate to empathy. It feels like nothing and no one could ever truly grasp the depth of pain experienced by those of us left behind.
Grief may very well evolve in stages, yet those stages evolve differently for each of us. Each of us who have been bereaved through suicide have had our hearts splintered. There is no timeline to dictate how long it will take for us to pick up those tiny pieces and begin to try and put them back together into something resembling what has been broken. If our hearts were fine porcelain, and lay scattered across the floor, what shattered piece do you start with first? What piece fits in beside the initial one? Then what piece fits beside that? Some of us can join those pieces more quickly and then there are some of us who are still crawling around the floor many years later trying to locate the broken shards. Either way, even when the porcelain heart has been restored to the best of our ability, it won’t ever be the same as it was. It will always show the cracks of where it was shakily rejoined and it will always have its weak spots.
My own journey through grief has had me crawling around on the floor in search of broken pieces for seven years now. I thought there was something wrong with me personally. I thought I lacked the strength of others who appeared to be doing so much better than I at repairing their hearts and…dare I say it…moving on. What I’m learning now, through listening to other people and finally admitting that I cannot do this alone, is that there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with any of us. Those of us who have been left behind after a suicide can embrace each other with honest empathy, however pain and grief is as individual as we are.
Yes, I’ve gone through all the emotions. Intense sorrow, guilt, anger, bewilderment, loneliness and a plethora of other feelings I’ve at times understood and at other times questioned. I dare say I’ll continue to experience those emotions while I keep searching for those broken pieces on the floor and try and place them back together. Some days I can look into tomorrow and know I’ll be able to face it with strength. Some days I look into tomorrow and know that one foot in front of another will exhaust me. The difference is now I don’t see the latter as weakness on my part. We’d show kindness and acceptance to others who are stumbling that mile in our shoes; we have to show kindness to ourselves.
We do the best we can whilst thrown into a nightmare no one could ever be prepared for. Pain cannot be pitched against pain. Grief cannot be pitched against grief. Loss cannot be pitched against loss. And we cannot pitch ourselves against that of another. There is no right or wrong length of time for people to grieve…there is only our personal length of time to grieve.
