Good Grief

Grief:  Pain of m ind arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, misconduct of oneself or others, etc. (Ed Note:  I'm not sure that it's fair to add an etc to an definition.  This is where we're defining something - tell me what the etc is).

I've joined a Grief Support Group.  And I've started to page through a book about how to effectively deal with grief that SuperK's sponsor - a great reader of all things written - passed along to me.

I'm still up in the air with the group.  I'm not much of a joiner-upper when it comes to stuff like this which probably explains why it took 18 months of meeting attendance before I actually figured out I had to quit drinking if I wanted to stay sober.  And I'm not much of a believer in things I can't quantify, logically explain, or scientifically prove so this psychological investigation into emotions doesn't come to me naturally.  Still, I'm going and I'm committed to continuing to go despite my sense that it's total fucking bullshit.  SuperK is surprised that I'm sticking with it.

"You never want to try anything new," she pointed out, adding  "Outside of traveling," defusing my one good argument.  While this isn't completely accurate it's accurate enough to piss me off a little.

The book is even more problematic because it's been penned by a couple of people who founded something called the Grief Recovery Institute.  I'm going to speculate that they're going to have a LOT to say about grief.  I'm guessing that if they just say "eh, give it a couple of months, you'll get over it" they probably wouldn't sell too many books.  But that doesn't mean that there isn't some good stuff in there.

The one theory I've found helpful so far is understanding that there are a lot of different kinds of grief besides mourning a loved one - retirement, moving, losing a pet, suffering an injury or serious illness, hearing that an ex-spouse is getting remarried.  I've found that some people who profess great grief make me mutter "oh, brother" and others make me wonder how they can get out of bed in the morning.  And the old adage of Time Takes Time comes up here, too, a reminder that grief is not linear.  It doesn't have a time frame that one can strictly adhere to.

I also see that grief is expressed in different ways by different people.  The reactions run the gamut from depression to anxiety to extended weeping.  It's all good - none of it is right and none of it is wrong as long as you're talking and trying to process what's going on.  Pretending that you're OK when something bad has happened is not OK.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."  Herbert Spencer