Getting acquainted with grief
In case you’re joining me for the first time at LeilaViss.com, I usually blog about teaching and playing the piano. I like to integrate music apps to reinforce learning, develop innovative ideas for creative teachers and adore arranging and composing.
On Thanksgiving 2019, our 25-year-old son named Carter was struck by a boat in Florida. Three of his limbs were severely injured and he lost his right arm. The shock of this trauma has jolted me into a sphere of grief. Right now, writing serves as my therapy as our family faces this brutal new reality.
[To keep up with Carter’s healing status, please follow his Caring Bridge site found here.]
So, my blogging has shifted to what I and my family from Denver, Colorado are experiencing as we grieve. I’ll unravel what this new reality looks like for me as a wife, mom of three grown sons, piano prep coordinator at the University of Denver, church organist and pianist, blogger, composer and piano teacher.
My hope is that my posts will connect with anyone who grieves.
Read my past to posts about grief by clicking on the titles below.
With a quick google search, I discovered a couple of things about grief. As the grief monster has taken over for good, I thought I’d get more acquainted with it.
1
The grief monster rides a train
I’ve discovered that the grief monster begins by completely shocking your system. Next, it forces you to board a train. The train makes scheduled stops at specific grief stages in any order, whenever it pleases. And, once departed, the train never settles on a final destination and you can never get off.
Apparently, there are stages or stops as you ride the grief monster train.
One site claims there are seven stages and defines them this way:
Shock and denial = a state of disbelief and numbed feelings.
Pain and guilt = a feeling that the loss is unbearable and that you’re making other people’s lives harder because of your feelings and needs.
Anger and bargaining = lashing out and/or telling God or a higher power that you’ll do anything they ask if they’ll only grant you relief from these feelings.
Depression = a period of isolation and loneliness during which you process and reflect on the loss.
The upward turn = a calm, relaxed state where anger and pain have died down.
Reconstruction and working through = putting the pieces of life back together and carrying forward.
Acceptance and hope = gradually acceptance of the new way of life and a feeling of possibility in the future.
https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief#order
Some sites trim grief down to five stages
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief#order
https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
So far, I’ve experienced denial. Every once in a while I have to pinch myself to make sure this new life isn’t a dream.
Anger flares up at the small, relatively dumb things. Chuck (my husband of 33 years) and I get snippy over really stupid things and both of us are extremely bothered by bad drivers. I haven’t shaken my fist at God like Chuck did during the ICU days but, I might take a swing at any moment.
Bargaining has not been a part of my MO yet but, depression has. Unlike life before the accident where every day is defined by alarm clocks, deadlines, checklists, emails, meetings, lessons, gym classes, appointments, rehearsals, practice, now there’s rarely an agenda beyond errands and hospital visits. Hours turn into days and days melt into each other until an entire week passes by.
The shock of trauma morphed my brain into mishmash which makes it hard to execute tasks and negates passions about anything. Getting back to teaching lessons, making lesson plans, sending tuition statements feels like transporting myself to another planet. Launching to this new planet will take considerable effort and is critical for me. I need to re-establish life (and income!) as it was BA—before the accident.
I don’t think I’ll ever whole-heartedly accept what happened to Carter and the ripple effect it’s had and will have on our family. Ever. Unlike a new position at a work place where you accept it, I didn’t ask for this job and won’t “accept it.” I’ll do what I have to do to get the job done. I’ll go on living with it, it will shape all of us for better or for worse. Maybe in time my attitude will change?
This whole grief train thing makes me feel like I’ve been drafted to active duty without registering, without bootcamp, without any say in the matter.
Andy, Carter’s friend who was snorkeling with him and saved Carter’s life.
2
The grief monster pokes its ugly head everywhere
My googling also showed that most books addressing the topic of grief deal with the death of a loved one. Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not about to compare one grief to another. Just saying that what I found in my initial search is that grieving normally tends to be associated to a permanent loss of a loved one.
Since Thanksgiving, we’ve been grieving but not the death of a son. We are grieving what was lost on Thanksgiving Day: loss of a limb, loss of the full function of three limbs, loss of Carter’s life trajectory (for now), loss of a familiar family dynamic.
Word travelled fast about Carter’s accident. Thankfully, we have deep roots and now a vast local and virtual community is praying for Carter and all of our family thanks in part to the platform of Caring Bridge. We could not be more grateful for this.
Because word has spread and because I’m a blogger and presenter on piano teaching, and thanks to social media, I’ve got a pretty big circle of dear colleagues and friends. Many of you have sent me private messages and emails expressing your concern and also sharing your own stories of grief. Some have suffered the loss of a loved one. Many have written about a loss which is not directly related with a death in the family.
From what’s been shared, the grief monster pokes his head in when
Treasured relationships turn estranged
Grandkids wonder why a parent is not coming back home
All household goods are burned in a devastating fire
Unexpected infections force a child to reside in ICU again and again
A triathlete is tethered to a wheel chair for life
Foster children are unexpectedly taken away
A child shows symptoms of autism
A cancer diagnosis is given
Injuries limit ability to work
And….fill in the blank.
Grief is not limited to death.
One of my friends said this after her father passed:
There are worse things than death.
Although I have just a little experience with the death of a loved one, I can see why she might say this when seeing someone you love suffer.
In my one-month+ experience with grief, I’ve learned how an unexpected, life-changing event that triggers grief can rock the world you thought was SO set in stone. And, when it does not end in death (thank goodness Carter’s alive) it turns into a long hospital stay, a painful recovery, a scramble for last-minute lodging, a loss of income, a change in job status, a concern about insurance and medical bills…
Some things I’ve observed about grief:
One person’s grief does not outweigh or outrank another person’s.
Grief is like the word love—there’s so many facets to it.
Everyone carries their grief differently.
Many don’t know what to say to those who grieve. In fact, I’m stumped to tell you what I really want to hear from you. I just know that I—we—want to hear from others.
So, to all those who experience any kind of grief—public or private—loss is loss, pain is pain and my heart goes out to you. I hope that we can start or continue to build a bond that lets us hold hands and jump off the grief monster train for at least an hour or two.
Walking along the water in West Palm Beach. It’s a beautiful place to grieve.
3
The grief monster plugs up things
I’ve tagged my own stage on the grief train called the Steel Trap stop.
All my Christian Reformed upbringing and rock-solid faith is locked up tight in a vault in my heart. It’s there and holding me up with a firm grip but I can’t get in it. And that same steel trap is on the outside, holding me up but not letting anything seep in—not any scripture, any praise for all the serendipity, any thankfulness for the healing…
Recently, we attended a church service where Carter usually plays bass guitar. The music was fabulous. I couldn’t sing and I choked on tears. Nothing could console, nothing could permeate the steel trap.
The sermon was equally good. We read the well-known scripture from John 3 and the only passage that stuck out to me was verse 8:
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the spirit.
Grief blows in like a hurricane and leaves a path of destruction. I don’t know where it came from and where it will take me. I do know that my spirit is still inside, just locked up for now.
Scripture doesn’t seem to cut through the steel trap at this train stop. What helps is knowing that many, MANY other saints are experiencing an unexpected gust of grief and we need to hold on tight to each other and brave the storm.
Together.
