“I eat a grief sandwich
I wear a grief coat
I watch a grief film.” - Lorde
If you have been through grief, then you know that when you are grieving, you live and breathe grief. Some people find it easier to move on from grief, and some a little harder. The feeling of having a hand gripped around your heart, squeezing it so tightly, you cannot breathe. A pain so sharp, yet the sounds never leave your mouth. Like a well that has been abandoned, your eyes too, are all dried up.
You put on a plastic smile, and you trudge on with life because that is expected of you. Society does not wait, it will not give you a year to grieve and move on. So you force yourself to swallow the sandwich, to laugh and mingle with friends, to continue with life as if nothing had happened. When they do ask you, “are you okay?”, you lie and say “yeah, of course”.
The world is unforgiving when you are grieving. But that does not mean that you are not allowed to. Take all the time you need to grieve. Watch those grief films, listen to your grieving playlist. Find people who you can say “I’m not okay”, and they’ll be okay with it. Laugh, then cry, then laugh again. Because sometimes, the best cure is to keep laughing.
Some wounds never heal, some people never stop grieving. And that’s okay. Some days feel worse than others, but there are days that hurt lesser. Days where we forget about the grief even. But grief is like a ghost, it haunts us over and over. If there’s anything I’ve learnt with grief, it’s that one day it does get better. Not in the sense that we stop grieving, but in a way that we can live as we grieve. And perhaps, that’s the best we can do. Because this grief is our last connection to the person we love and lost.
S.
