The Purpose of a Caregiver's Grief Process

I recently had breakfast with a friend who just returned from a long stay in India to participate in a deepening spiritual process. Over eggs and toast, pancakes and pure maple syrup, we sat for three and a half hours (!) talking about what had been going on in each other's lives while he was away. And over this simple and common breakfast, he reminded me of something not so simple and not so common. Something so obvious that I never noticed it, never thought of it, never acknowledged it until he said the words.

I told him about my grief at losing Romeo to dementia, how I hadn't been able to keep the stress level low no matter what I did, how an overwhelming sadness hung over me. I told him how the activities I did previously to keep stress on a leash no loner helped. Meditation didn't seem to help, drumming didn't seem to help, exercise didn't seem to help, qi gong didn't seem to help. Reading, listening to music, having fun, none of the usual stuff was working. I am stressed out, sad, anxious, tearful.

He wants to know more about my stress level. I explain that if my stress level, for example, were 8 on a scale of 1-10, then previously I was able to take it down to perhaps 3 or 4 or 5 by doing any one of my usual activities, my "usual stuff." Now, however, no matter what I do, that stress level stays at 8. And it's weighing on me emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically.

His reply, so elegant, so insightful, so freeing, was simply, "What? You expect to feel good during a grief process?"

Aha. Of course. What was I thinking? The purpose of the grieving process, for goodness sake, is to grieve. Sheesh. I'm a little slow sometimes, especially when I'm in the thick of something, when my mind is occupied with something major like grieving for Romeo. Expecting to feel good during a grief process? Well, yes, I guess I had that expectation. Silly me.

The only question that remains now is how to make friends with that grief, how to greet it, let it come out, and express itself, and how to be joyful when it shows up. Grief is part of life, after all, and life is exquisite, grief and all. How, then, to welcome it? The answer, I think, is to honor it simply by letting it be. By recognizing it and inviting it to stay for as long as it wants. By giving it the space it needs to express itself. By letting it take over an entire day if that's what it wants. By crying for hours and being fine with that. By laughing when it's over, at least for the moment. And by knowing, really knowing, that this circumstance that Romeo and I find ourselves in -- is really okay just as it is. There is truly nothing we can do about it but ride it through, in both sadness and joy.