Thankful for Grief...?

Thanksgiving was a little different this year. Since I’m a lot further away from my family now, I spent Thanksgiving Day by myself. My parents came up here the week before so I did get to spend some time with them though. Its still hard to be thankful and enjoy the holidays. This time of the year is hard for a lot of people and now these last three years I have seen why. This is the time of the year to be excited and joyful and all that stuff, right? I mean, “Happy” Thanksgiving…. “Happy” holidays…. “Merry” Christmas, right? It isn’t supposed to be sad or depressing. Grief makes the happy times sad. It makes you realize even more that the one you are grieving over is not there anymore. So why be thankful for something that makes you miserable and depressed….

There are so many quotes about grief out there. Seriously, google it. I have and a lot of them I just roll my eyes at. I roll my eyes at certain ones because they are cheesy. “Where there is deep grief, there is deep love.”…. “grief is just love with no place to go.” I mean there really is nothing wrong with these types of quotes and the message behind them is true. Grief and love are intertwined with each other. You cannot have grief without love, but that is not what grief is. Quotes like these makes it sound like grief is sensational. It makes you go “aww that is so sweet” like the ending of a romantic movie or something. I don’t need a quote to remind me of how much I love and miss Kati. I see it and feel it every day. Grief isn’t sensational. It isn’t romantic. Grief is a horrible place that requires a lot of work and help to get out of it. It is a dark, at times, scary hole that seems like miles and miles deep and you will never see the light of day again. It is sitting on the floor with your dog in one hand and Kleenexes in the other hand. It standing over a headstone that is being dripped with tears as you talk to your person as if they are still there with you. It is hunching over and leaning on your kitchen counter in front of the sink as you try to wash dishes by yourself. It’s knowing that you will never eat another Thanksgiving meal with that person or be able to buy that person another Christmas present or birthday present. Grief isn’t just love. It’s pain. It’s misery. It’s waking up after finally crying yourself to sleep at 3AM and having the same knife pushed through your heart over and over again each and every day. That is not sensational.

After that wonderful description it’s easy to see why anyone would be thankful for grief, right?... so why be thankful for something that makes you miserable and depressed? Grief is a gift. It is a gift that you only receive at the worst possible time in your life because of the worst possible tragedy. Grief is a gift that allows you to see things that other people who have not experienced it cannot see. It is wisdom. I never imagined that at 38 years old I would be “wise”. Wisdom doesn’t always come with age, just experience. Grief is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, experience in a person’s entire life. At 38, I have that gift. I don’t want that gift because it came at the worst possible time in my life because of the worst possible tragedy. With wisdom comes the knowledge that my grief is not the end though. I will probably carry some semblance of grief for the rest of my life, but that doesn’t have to be the final chapter. The wisdom of grief is being able to walk through one of the most difficult things in life and surviving. I’m thankful for God’s help and strength in getting through the process and the ability to share even a little bit of that experience and wisdom. I’m thankful that losing someone so important to me makes me realize how valuable the relationships I have are. I’m thankful that while grief makes me sad at times, it also brings back memories that I will cherish for my entire life. I’m thankful for family and friends who have helped throughout the process and who have prayed for me. I’m thankful for my Savior and God who is bringing me through all of this and showing me all the time things that I wouldn’t have known if I wasn’t going through the grief process. So I’m thankful for grief because as cheesy as it sounds it is evidence of how much love I had and will always have for Kati.