I was thinking, while sitting down listening to the hubbub around me.
In the recent days I have not liked having time to sit and think; it brings about memories and thoughts of my grandad and they usually make me sad or start the tears again. This of course is not conducive in public. While I know everyone would understand my situation, they would politely look the other way while I wiped away the tears, I don’t really like the idea of wandering about with a snot covered face and liquid sadness dribbling down my face.
So, when I found myself thinking I nearly stopped myself and gave my brain something constructive to do, fold the washing, plan the christmas family dinner or decide what to buy for christmas presents… but even those thoughts tend to lead back to the area I don’t wish to dwell on. Instead, I paused and considered what I was trying to stop.
Do I hide my grief?
Why?
I find it easier to remember him and allow my tears to fall in the still, suffocating darkness of the night. Is it that this is the time I have allowed for my grief, is it that grief shies away from broad daylight, or that it’s socially unacceptable to cry and wail in public/while at work/doing the grocery shopping?
Am I unconsciously conforming to some rule?
I found in the first few days after his passing that I was on some sort of rollercoaster. The almost panic-like state as I would realise the tidal wave of grief was rearing its ugly head again. This, just before that incredibly fast and scary decent into the sorrow, before the pain would wash over me, dragging me however reluctantly into its depths before slowly, painfully drowning me. Then, the slow and plodding, laboured climb back out of the depths of sorrow and grief like the slow crawling the carts of the rollercoaster make as you climb that first great height.
Rinse and repeat… or so the shampoo bottle says. It so went with the rollercoaster ride of grief.
So, why then, in the last few days, have I been able to (consciously or unconsciously) push this vicious cycle out of my every day life – the life that gallops along without my grandad – and push it into the dark night-time, when I can grieve in private?
Is it just the simple, life must go on? It waits for nobody. If I don’t go along with it, I’ll be left behind?
I’m not sure.
I suppose grief is a very individual thing. Perhaps I don’t wish to share it with everyone? (Why then would I be blogging about it?!) I think perhaps, partially some of the personal nature of seeing someone grieve in public, right in front of you is too much for most people to handle. They don’t know what to do. I know I didn’t when others went through this. So perhaps, as I have been before I wish to spare people that uncomfortable unknowningness (is that a word?) of what to do (or not do) with a person who openly grieves in front of you.
Mmm… I might think more on this later, when it’s not so fresh, not so painful.
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