Processing

A reflection on navigating loss and grief 

By Ella Tracy

Loss

I didn’t expect to be broken. 

I was certain, since it had been so long, that I would be the solid rock for other mourners to cling to in tumultuous grief. I made a point to myself when I put makeup on before leaving my room: I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t. I didn’t have time to fix the makeup before the next event. I silently told myself that I would not be affected. 

I was wrong. 

I knew I was wrong the moment I set foot in that house. 

For a few minutes, I held myself together. I felt the agony of those around me like a dark cloud, somber and suffocating and stifling. I deeply connected with the emotions of others who were imagining a world where a good man wasn’t there, faced with the impending and irreversible departure of a dear friend and companion. I kept myself afloat by transporting my mind to other worlds. Simply refusing to think about the present numbed the pain. 

When the anguish was too much to bear, I asked myself what I was trying to prove. 

There is nothing wrong with grief. It is a continuation of love. The totality of it forces us to slow down, to exist in the moment, to remember. Individuals experience and express grief differently. But pretending you do not feel it denies your beautiful, messy, broken human soul and body.  

Many did not hide what they felt. Eventually, I forgot to try.  

So I held a dying man’s hand and wept. 

I embraced friends and family and wept. 

I looked at pictures and listened to stories. 

And I wept. 

For now, there was community. It wasn’t a single unaffected person who kept us afloat. It was all of us, unafraid to mourn, understanding of one another, sharing the present with each other. Self-imposed solitude and denial would have caused me to drown, not survive. Surrounded by those who felt the same as me allowed us all to take shaky steps forward. 

But I was alone when I got the text. 

Sorrow

Sheer grief is a curious thing. 

Mine was persistent and expected. It hit me hard enough to knock me back in my seat. It wracked my body with endless sobs. It shut down every neuron so I could not process, could barely think. My body collapsed in on itself. It needed to be small, protected, unnoticeable so all focus could be on the mental agony. My fingers clawed at my clothes, searching for skin and flesh and physical pain to take my mind away from the thing that caused every other system to implode. 

And it goes on and on and on until the mind cannot cope, until it is completely drained, until all I could do was stare at nothing. Until I gave no care to my appearance. Until my surroundings didn’t exist. Until my world was made of numbness and blurry eyes and the same moments playing over and over in my head. 

I did not have the will to move. 

My laptop remained open. My incomplete to-do list sat beside it. 

I did not touch them. 

And that is okay. 

Cope

Grieving is not easy or temporary. The effects linger. It stops the body in its tracks and forces it to still. And so we cope with the uneasiness of stillness.

We cope with the unproductivity. 

We cope with the slow, repetitive thoughts. 

We cope with the quiet. 

Distraction is effective, but only for a while. Disappearing into a show, a movie, a book transported me outside of my reality. The brain clings to what is extraordinary and comforting. It seeks a conduit for the emotions trapped within. Consuming fiction is simple enough; it’s easy when the fantasy is created for you.  

And yet, the gray cloudiness lingers. 

It’s interrupted with flashes of sunlight. A friend smiles and waves at me. Another gives me a snack and drags me along with them to eat a full meal. Some simply sit with me and provide a gentle, warm energy. Others offer a hug, soft empathy and “Let me know if you need anything.” 

I learned a lesson in those first few days. 

I learned to trust. 

Wander

There is a balance between isolation and community. The instinct to cut oneself off from the world, to flounder alone in the pain, to re-enter society with a gaping wound hastily bandaged both goes along with human nature and denies the soul what it needs. 

The mind needs seclusion to process, but it needs connection to heal. 

It needs trust. It needs vulnerability. It needs warm tea and cozy blankets and every genre of music on the planet. It needs vibrant sunsets and baby animals, sad movies and rom-coms. It needs reminders of what is good and beautiful and constant in the world while its broken framework is rebuilt. 

And so I wandered, searching for the tools to put myself back together. I found them in my friends, in schoolwork once I was ready to tackle it, in my favorite outfits, in memories old and new. I brought myself back to life as I loved the life that existed around me. 

There are still moments of remembrance. Moments where I miss, imagine, reminisce, mourn. 

I lose nothing when I acknowledge those moments. 

I lose far more when I ignore them. 

So I process. I grieve. I try my best to balance isolation and connection. I have learned to not deny myself what I need. Acceptance of myself scatters the clouds and allows the sun to warm my heart. 

It becomes a little easier each day I wander on.