Big Arms Big issues

Nobody told me that grief would require so much grace. If you’ve ever grieved a loss before, you know the feeling. Your heart is broken, you are in pain, and the idea that you have to extend one iota of favor towards anyone else feels terribly unfair. 

Or perhaps you are a friend or family member to someone grieving, you’ve had your head bitten off by them one too many times and are retreating. You’re done, you tried, no more. Grief can set off such a ripple effect of other hurt. Hurt over who did and didn’t show up, hurt over something said or not said, hurt over funeral plans, dividing up possessions, deciding what to do with the house and the car and the precious remnants of a life once loved. To grieve is to experience hundreds of smaller aches and pains along the way. To grieve with peace requires you to coat yourself in grace. 

I write this from a place of genuinely trying to assume that everyone in my life right now is doing the best they can. We are all trying to grieve the loss of our beloved Jason and to support each other. We are doing this imperfectly, but we are doing it. I am lucky, I don’t have toxic in-laws or spiteful friends, and still, people have hurt me, because they are people. We are all so frail, so imperfect, we are all fumbling for the right words and actions, trying to make sense of something that can’t make sense, trying to show up for each other and sometimes doing it in all the wrong ways. But we are trying. 

I’m not saying you should allow yourself to be mistreated in the name of extending grace. Boundaries and grace are not mutually exclusive. We can extend forgiveness and love while protecting ourselves from ongoing harm. I know the intent of the people I have in my life. They are doing their best to help, sometimes imperfectly, so I opt for grace. If your experience is different, trust your gut and protect yourself. Have conversations about what you need and if someone can’t or won’t adapt, draw a boundary. Grace is not a free pass to abuse. 

To the best of my understanding, I define forgiveness and grace somewhat differently. I pray the Theo bros do not flock to my comments section to inform me of how wrong I am. 

Forgiveness is reactive. You choose to forgive someone for a perceived slight or hurt in response to something they did. You are in control, and forgive when you feel like it. Forgiveness implies that a barrier between you and the offender was put up, and you need to tear it down.

Grace is proactive. It is going into each day with the acceptance that every person is a deeply flawed human being but is probably doing their best. It is the knowledge that we are operating in a harsh world and will often fail each other in a thousand unintentional ways. It is choosing not to be offended before something even happens. It is choosing not to put up the barrier to begin with. 

Now, on this treacherous, long road you are being forced to walk, if you have any hope of doing so peacefully, of not burning down the remaining pillars in your life, of not hurting yourself and others more, you are going to need to offer grace. Armor up in grace. A metric butt-ton of grace to be exact. That is an official measurement. You are going to have to carry grace with your big old arms toward yourself, toward others, and toward the person who passed away. 

Grace for Others

This is critical and so, so hard. Sometimes grief feels like a thousand tiny paper cuts. People trying to help and ultimately hurting. From the family member who said that stupid thing you can’t stop replaying in your head, to the friend you thought would show up for you that didn’t, to that stranger who posted that Facebook status that set you off. In times of grieving, every day offers a new hurt, a fresh scrape, the reopening of the wound that simply cannot heal. 

If you’re anything like me, you might find yourself caught up in the old shower fight situation. I win all the fights I have in my head while showering, and I build compelling cases while shampooing. If my bathroom was a courtroom, I would be the presiding judge, and the jury would always vote in my favor. I’ve had a ton of shower fights with myself since this whole thing started. 

Here is the thing, very few people are waking up and thinking, “Hmmmmm, how can I best upset Carley today.” Actually, probably nobody is thinking that. Very few people are probably thinking that about you, too. People want to help and are doing their best, and they may unintentionally hurt you in the process. People are going to say things that don’t sit right with you, they’re going to ask insensitive questions, they’re going to think something is helping when really they’re hurting. They are, simply put, going to blow it. 

You have two choices here: you can hold onto that gripe, you can assume offense, you can live in a world where everyone is out to get you and wallow in all the ways you’ve been harmed. You can do that, you really can. Nobody would blame you if you did. Or, you can offer grace. You can let go. You can assume good intentions, even if the outcome is poor. You can let others off the hook of your expectations. You can love their heart, you can love them for trying, even if it wasn’t the right way. 

When I start to become offended, feel like a victim, or get hurt, I remind myself that everyone in my circle is doing their best. I remember that his family is doing their best while reeling from their own loss. I remember that my family is doing their best while also grieving the loss of someone they had come to view as a part of us, and trying to deal with me, a completely catatonic individual. I remember that my friends are doing their best to support me while maintaining their own lives and families. While it feels terribly unfair, the world is still spinning for them. We are all drowning in different ways, and sometimes, we do not have the capacity to throw each other a life jacket, or we throw the wrong life jacket, or we throw one, and it doesn’t quite reach us. We are all doing our best in a terribly impossible situation. 

There are people who couldn’t make it to the funeral, there is grace for that.

There are people who have tried to comfort me but instead offended me, there is grace for that.

There are people who, in their ignorance, have asked intrusive and insensitive questions, there is grace for that. 

There are people who haven’t responded to my pain in the way I wanted or needed them to, there is grace for that. 

There is so much grace for all of this. Extend it, my friends. If not for them, for your own mental well-being. We do not need to add more hurt or more grief onto our gaping wound. 

Grace for yourself

During grief, you may come to hate yourself. You may be disappointed with your ability to meet the challenges each day brings, you may know that you are being a complete and total bitch but feel powerless to stop it, you may be disappointed in your physical output. You may have once upon a time been a high achiever, and now you find yourself incapable of completing more than one task a day, and that task was done poorly anyways. 

Grief requires so much grace for yourself.  On a good day I don’t do grace. I have high expectations of myself and of others, mostly of myself. But grief has such a sinister way of knocking you down, of depleting your physical strength, of robbing you of precious brain power, of transforming time into a vacuum of nothing and eliminating your memory. Living life is just harder when you’re grieving. 

So now is the time to have grace for yourself, for your own limited capacity, for your own frailty and flaws, for the reality that you are probably trying to do your own best, and failing in a thousand ways.

Right now, grace for myself looks like:

Realizing that my work output isn’t going to be anywhere near what it was before July 20^th for probably quite some time. This is okay, it is what my mind can handle right now. 

Scaling back on physical activities. Long runs have turned into slow hikes and weight lifting has turned into yoga. This is okay, it is what my body can accommodate right now.  

Forgiving myself for the days when I snap at people, or act in ways I really wish I hadn’t, or become someone I don’t recognize. I am trying but will fail because this is really fucking hard. This is okay, because it’s the best I can do right now. 

A woefully empty calendar, because one to two things is all I can handle in a day. This is okay, because sometimes getting through another 24 hours is my only accomplishment right now. 

I’m lowering my expectations of myself. My brain will come back online, the fog will lift and my body will be able to function. I will never be exactly as I once was, but I will return. It will become easier to be nice. Until that happens, I’m giving myself grace. You should too. 

I’m learning to also have grace for all the ways, perceived or real, I failed Jason. I have been wracked with guilt since he passed. I feel guilty over what I did or didn’t do to stop his death, over ways I could have/should have/would have been a better person, a better partner, a better co-parent while we were together. The week he died we had a fight about pants. Literally pants you guys. I was upset he hadn’t come over to help me figure out which pants I should return to Abercrombie & Fitch. So dumb. My mind has latched onto this insignificant skirmish, and convinced me he died not knowing I loved and appreciated him. None of this is true. We made up. This argument was quite inconsequential. Our last day together was beautiful, but this is what happens in grief.

In grief, everything gets twisted and contorted, and you may find yourself going over everything with a fine tooth comb. You’ll wish you hadn’t had that fight, or had bought them that expensive thing they’d been wanting, spent more time together, gone on that trip, said I love you that morning, answered their last text. There are a thousand things you’ll wish you could have done differently. You can’t. All you can do is have significant grace for your own fragile humanity, for the moments you missed, the fights you had, the things you wish you could take back. None of us are perfect, and grief shines a magnifying glass on that. Give yourself grace, give yourself permission to have been imperfect in all the ways you were to your loved one. What’s done is done, nobody can possibly live their life in such a way that when death comes they have no regrets, it is the human condition. Try to embrace your own humanity and find grace for the “what ifs” that come.

Grace for the one who died 

I might lose you at this one, but let me explain. There will be a varying need for grace based on how your person passed. Perhaps it was entirely out of their control; they had cancer or were hit by a drunk driver. Or maybe it feels like it was entirely in their control. They completed suicide, placed themselves in a known dangerous situation, or it was drug or alcohol related. It is so easy for us to think, “Well, they could have just…not”. If you fall into the latter category, this will require so much ongoing grace. I have come to the conclusion that even what is considered an intentional death is an accidental death. The reality is, if they could have not, they would have not. This is hard to wrap our heads around. I am not someone who has struggled with suicidality or addiction, so it feels easy for me to say well, they just shouldn’t have. I believe that if they could have done differently, they would have done differently. These powerful forces are above the pay grade of this simple blog. 

Regardless of how they passed, it can be hard not to feel anger. We know logically they didn’t mean to die. They couldn’t control the cancer, they didn’t leave the house that day knowing they’d get hit by a car. We know this, but logic defies reason in grief, and so we are angry. Angry they left us, angry we are solo parenting, angry our future is gone, angry they aren’t here to pick up the pieces, angry they can’t comfort us. Feelings of being screwed over or how nice it must be for them to be in a better place while I’m down here flit through my head daily. Sometimes I picture Jason and my mom up in heaven, drinking coffee on a porch and chatting away, and I want to tell them to both F off. Like how great for you two, I’m completely and utterly alone and depressed down here, but go on, enjoy your day without me. 

There is ongoing grace to be had as we hit new milestones, hardships, triggers or learn new things about the person who passed. Maybe the finances weren’t quite in order, or you wish they’d just gone to the doctor or taken the damn heart medication or drawn up that will you’d been begging them to do. Maybe you’re just irrationally mad they’re not at your child’s soccer game or graduation, perhaps you cry in bed alone at night and wonder how they could have left you so lonely on this miserable planet. Or maybe I’m just a raging psychopath, and nobody else feels anger at their person for leaving them. But if you’re anything like me, you do, and you’ll need lots of grace because it is hard living without them. Your anger is a sign of your love, of course you are angry, a terribly unfair thing has happened and you miss them. Have grace for your loved one too.

I encourage all of this not because I think it’s the right thing to do, or because God demands it. I don’t know your faith affiliation and I personally do not care what God wants of me right now. I encourage it because I think grief is incredibly fucking hard, and we do not heed to heap more pain onto ourselves by harboring resentments toward ourselves and others. I recommend it because I do genuinely believe that we are all beloved people trying and failing each other, but each deserving of goodness and grace. I encourage it because at the end of all this, we want to have retained our friends, not have made them our punching bags.

Let’s set ourselves and others free by facing each day with as much grace as we can muster. May we see the goodness in each other, the humanity, the goodwill as we all fumble through impossible situations together.