Most often I find myself praying to forget. Despite them being my fondest memories in life, they are what cause me the most pain. Those treasured moments burn like hot coals in the morning and keep me from sleep. If only I could focus on the troubled times, the hard parts, the things that didn’t bring joy. If only the worse times with her weren’t better than the best times anywhere else. I would gladly have the operation to remove every memory from those years. To go on with a hole in my memory where all my hopes and dreams once lived. Unnoticed. Unaware.
Grief is a sign that you loved deeply. And the deeper the grief the greater you loved. The greater you loved the more painful this unnecessary torture of life’s experience will be. There is no way around it but to feel it. And there is nothing good about what you will feel. It is too big to bottle up and hide in the corner. It is to grande, too much, to deal with in quiet rooms alone. It is evidence you are capable of huge love. And therefore, at risk for greatest loss. When love is in front of you the risk is worth every bit. When it disappears, and you feel the pain of generational loss, the gamble seems unfair.
I grieve because my heart was honest about my love for a person.
“Black care rarely sits behind a rider who pace is fast enough” Theodore Roosevelt
Though the luminary icon he was, Teddy Roosevelt, suffered great losses, as well as, great sadness. The history books are full of his wisdom, stories of adventures, and themes of perseverance and hard work. But the famous quote about outrunning the profound grief that plagued him was more a reflection of his hope to mitigate the pain than a success story of his escape from its prison. It did plague him his entire life, and it followed him into the mountains, down the rivers, into the plains, and at every turn in his personal and professional life. It led to feelings of insecurity, shame, and defeat superimposed onto his great victories. Depression is not a rider on a journey, it is the weather front we must ride through. We must ride through because there is no going back. The journey on the road of time has no turnarounds, no rest stops, only forks and bends, and ups and downs. What President Roosevelt illuminated in his honesty about his grief and depression, however, was the truth that the only real option is forward.
We lost what we loved the most. We woke up outside our world and watched it burn to the ground full of every hope and dream that we held so dear. The driving force behind every step, the reason for every morning, the joy in every night- gone at once. Depression didn’t show up behind us and jump on the horse, depression is space that exists outside our collapsed universe. It is the black hole behind the galaxy of your hopes and dreams. There is no outrunning the air you breath. It just is. And the depression that comes with grief is the air you will breath, like it or not, and we are assured to not.
In the initial moments of despair there is no way to find your bearings. There exist no compass for grief or this new world in which you find yourself living. Fear is unavoidable. It is scary. The air is heavy. It is dark. Chaos. During these initial moments, we have only a few limited choices in this regrettable life experience. First, we can try to stay put, roll up into a ball, stay in the moment, shelter in place. And we all do for a variable amount of time during the early moments of shock. But we might choose to stay right here hoping to be as near to that old world as possible. We accept our fate, so to speak, and wait for the monster to devour us. But the path of time will keep moving forward and every time you look up that old world, in its remnants of ashes and dust, will appear further and further away. You cannot stay near what was lost no matter how hard you try. Your reality is gone and what you replaced it with is not real- the world you will inhabit is the matrix of proximity to a world that no longer exists.
Second, you can exit this life. People hate talking about this, avoiding it and condemning it, but nearly everyone has found theirselves in a place of pain so great it seems like the most passionate and merciful self actionable option. It is not weakness. It is not a sin greater than any other. It is a moment in time where the human spirit has been so badly beaten that any spark of life has been snuffed out and no hope remains. And it demands compassion. An attempt to deter someone in such great pain that ending their life feels like the only option with the fear of eternal hell as punishment is useless. We are in hell. It feels eternal. And God has already taken what seems like great pleasure in punishing us here on earth. How many have called out to God before pulling the trigger. How many times has God stood in the way of that bullet?
We know that if we can get that rider back on their horse time will move forward and they will find enough hope to realize their belonging here on earth. We know that any persons absence in this world leaves a tear in the fabric of time that is severely underestimated by the suffered. And only love will help move them forward. And only moving forward will give them a perspective outside of the hell they are living in now and hope for a possible future. The person sitting in the ashes of who they were as a person is unrecognizable to themselves. They cannot see their value in this world. All hands on deck. Share your own spark of humanity with them until enough of their own light burns bright enough to see the path ahead. And if you, the reader, are in this place now- I love you. Truly. Do not underestimate what your absence would do to this world and to those that love you AND those who will love you. This option will fix nothing, it will only broaden the scorched earth that has befallen you, and pull others into the hell you will leave here on earth.
The only other option is to be the rider in the storm. That heavy dark cloud of black care is relentless, but the only road available is time, and the only way through is forward. Be the bison, lower your head, and walk head on into that storm. The most difficult thing in this moment is to love yourself. But you need that the most now. And you deserve it. As someone who has had great faith much of his life, and searched and believed in miracles, and still fears God and is certain of his existence- I do not see God in these moments. I don’t say that to suggest seeking God for strength is hopeless. On the contrary, I think it is often our only hope. But I say this because those who find themselves here should know that now is not the time for a dissertation on God’s involvement with mankind. It is survival.
I have no quote or scripture to end this essay today. I only have a heart for anyone hurting the hurt I have felt. The deep despair that is all consuming. The sensation of burning alive. Worse, watching the person you love burn alive and being unable to save them. No matter what, you have value and you belong in this world. You don’t see God? Look inside, there is a spark of creation there. You don’t see hope? You are the hope. You are loved.
Might I suggest that there was one bullet God did take for us- on the cross. And perhaps, though it’s hard to see now, the scene of that crucifixion will appear on the other side of this forsaken storm.
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss
The haunting thick fog of depression that settles in through the cracks of our grief and loss and persists well beyond its welcome holds a horrific grasp upon our mourning. If you are looking for a more cheerful and motivating take on the suffering of this Black Care, today is not the day. Perhaps, tomorrow, a more helpful and hopeful essay on the rise from its clutches will evolve. But depression, the most massive stone that falls upon our hearts, mandates that an honest description precedes prescription. And for all its weight and all it’s persistence, there is much to say.
There is a cold and quiet shock after loss, that moment when you sit, somehow still inside yourself, while you shake in terror somewhere far outside your body. Every small background noise, once unnoticed, falls deafening upon your ears. Even your anatomy seems to shift in fluid form, melting: stomach into throat, tongue to roof of mouth, heart toward intestines, heartbeat into your eardrums, and eyes somewhere across the room watching. The amorphous mess you are in the suddenness of loss.
While every other emotional stage of grief seems to come and go, depression settles down upon you and fills your pores like smoke. When does bereavement transition into depression? Who cares- besides your therapist. These early moments, while the mind buzzes and ceases it usefulness, is when depression takes the opportunity to fill in all of the gaps in your shattered reality. While you deny, rage in anger, and bargain for your life back, distracted by the chaos, those blue devils are settling in for a long and lonely stay. Waves of every form of grief come and go from your shore, but this great sadness has anchored itself mercilessly to your soul.
As the shock slowly fades, and the flames calm to embers and ash, the cold empty version of you will be all that remains. How long must we suffer at this great affliction? Taste has abandoned your tongue, swallowing and deep breath become a conscious effort, focus will evade you at every routine task. Depression never brought a single answer, but a thousand questions. How? How can one person have the power to wreck my existence, my entire human experience? Why? Why would a loving God stand-by in our greatest time of need? Who? Who have I become in instant unawareness? When? When will this empty pain become tolerable? What? What will become of this broken heart? Job asked a thousand questions. But we don’t suffer as Job. For in his story, God finally answered, and restoration was paid for his obedience. No, our depression gathers at the corners of our lips as jealous anger toward Job and his loving God. What is depression? It is everything. It is you now. It is the eternal echo of the hammer against anvil reverberating off the canyon walls. It is embedded into your DNA to pass on for generations.
Nobody tells you that the depression that overlies our grief is a hungry beast. We feed it out of desperation, at first. The stage of mistakes- looking for a quick fix in another person, place, or thing. Later we make sacrifices to it- all things that once brought us joy. But hungry still we face it’s gaping fangs to wonder what might satiate this creature. Wise and shifty, depression never speaks, it introduces thoughts and feelings using your own voice. When it bears down upon us in this very moment and we hear those familiar words- “what I, Depression, crave to consume is you”- it is time to resist. With every last bit of self. With every hope you still might have in God. Resist. Depression doesn’t deserve your life. Somewhere you are something more than this beast upon you. Fight. Keep going through hell. One step at a time.
The very real fear is that in our grief we will become our depression. A cancer consuming every healthy cell. “[b]ecause wherever I sat- on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar). It is an ever present air that we breath. It fits like heavy wet clothing. It is holes in your socks on a cold winter night. How do we resist it becoming our identity and following us to a welcomed grave? I don’t know. All I know is that what eventually feels the best is throwing everything back at it- striking that beast in the mouth. We have little control in this new world of grief. Giving up and letting depression define us is one more loss that we, perhaps, cannot afford. Look to the literature, the historical figures who suffered, your family, your God. Look back at that happy person you were before the Black Dog grabbed him by the throat. You owe him something. He has suffered more than he deserved.
