Those first few shocking hours of grief

Unparalleled with anything ever before experienced, that first few hours of grief shook me like nothing else. Yet, I’ve had so many moments like it over the past 16 years or so.

It was night, and that night lasted forever. I drove and drove, hardly able to keep my eyes on the road, as tears streamed so hot and heavy like never before. It was such an incredibly shocking experience, like being thrown to the bottom of the ocean with a heavy chain tied around my feet. It seemed I was drowning in pain and it was relentless.

I drove aimlessly, without destination, but craved somewhere to drive that held some memory of comfort. Although I’d been a Christian for nearly 13 years, I hadn’t darkened the door of a church for several years. I had such a sick, backslidden faith. But it was to a church I drove, about 40 kilometres from home.

For the first time in years, I prayed to God; in the resonance of bargaining, “Lord, anything but THIS… anything, I’ll do anything.” I should have known back then, but still I refused to recognise it, a new life was beginning, and to say I hated it would be a cataclysmic understatement. I simply was unable to come to terms with the reality that had come suddenly to be mine.

I not only sobbed, there were shrieks and writhings of self-harm that I’d never heard or felt from myself; kind of death cries of anguish resembling the feeling that I was actually dying, but in reality, I was far from death. Little did I know that life was being reborn, but the pain was so intense I felt my insides were crawling outside of me. (Honestly, how do you describe the indescribable?)

I sat there for hours. Midnight came, though I was barely able to recognise the time, I was so intoxicated by exhaustion. Nobody knew at that stage where I was, what I was doing or the plight I was in.

This was to be the first of many such lonely encounters where all there was, was me and God. I initially doubted God was there, but then I couldn’t bear the fact. He must have been there. But at this point I’d never before or since felt so alone.

I should not have been driving, but I drove home. I didn’t sleep much as my mind tormented me for my present and future. I entered a partnership with anxiety there, and it never really left me for months afterwards.

Those first few shocking hours of grief I’ve since learned are horrendously normal in our human experience when we experience loss. How on earth do we warn people who have not encountered it? We can’t. Until we’ve been there, we have no idea.

Until that time, I had no idea what life on the other side of loss was like. I had no idea it existed. I was clueless about a pain that many people suffered. I literally had the eyes of my heart opened in an instant.

Having been there in that place where shock and numbness stay with haunting loyalty, we just know that those moments change us forever. In such moments, we lose our naivety, and trauma takes its place.

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash