Moving Through Grief

You are the longing melody

That my soul sings

The tearful blinks of yearning 

For one more scene

As ending credits

Slowly roll across the screen

excerpt from - the ‘in between’

©Laura Weston

Hiding

I’ve always experienced powerful moments within movie scenes and lyrics, subconsciously locking feelings firmly in place that my body remembers long after. Movies, music, art, and poetry have always been ways for me to channel and move through all different emotions. Because I am drawn strongly towards certain films and songs that are directly tied to my dad, when I was hiding from my grief, I would never allow myself to go there willingly. For years, I pushed away these things that connected me to him. 

I wouldn’t listen to the music that sang directly to my soul. I wouldn’t watch the movies that bonded me to my dad throughout my childhood because I was afraid of the pain. And in a sense, I believed that if I didn’t embrace the things that connected me to his memory, then he wasn’t really gone. 

For years, I continued to separate myself from the things that brought me closest to my pain. As a result, I also disconnected from the things I loved most – writing and poetry. 

I drank to avoid all these things which drove me further away from myself and the memories that would allow me to channel a connection to my dad. Drinking allowed me to deny that the event of his death ever happened. His passing was unexpected and sudden. One day he was there, and in the next instant, gone. 

The abrupt nature of his death allowed me to imagine he was simply out of town for work. I created this false story and clung to it. There was a sense of comfort about leaving things open-ended. It was as if the movie paused and there would still be more if I just waited it out. That his absence was just a glitch in the film. I held out hope that one day I would find the remote, push play, and he would be there. And life would continue on as it always had. 

I shut down any reference to his memory and continued to drown out the grief with an “out of sight, out of mind” approach.

I remember feeling like I somehow cracked the code of grief, miraculously arriving at acceptance. For a while, this seemed to work. But in reality, my life remained paused there in the story I created around his death in an effort to protect myself from the pain. 

My grief remained stuck as I attempted to push it deep down below the surface not knowing it would inevitably bubble up again at random times with a vengeance. 

This unfinished business showed up through intense emotional derailment in the midst of the smallest stressors, irritability, anxiety, and depression. It also increased the frequency and progression of my alcohol use.

When I started moving towards the unprocessed grief of losing him, I thought I had it all planned out. As my therapist suggested years ago, it was important for me to create some sort of prayer, ritual, or closing ceremony that would help me to process it. I always envisioned one day, going down to my basement and sifting through boxes of mementos and crying all of the unshed tears while channeling his memory. I imagined myself re-emerging into the world lighter and changed. Little did I know, these things very rarely unfold how we plan or expect them to. And grief is not pre-packaged in nice stackable boxes that unwrap at predictable stages or intervals. The process is messy.

Moving grief through the arts

In my experience, to feel deeply means to experience love and pain with dual intensity. It means being vulnerable and feeling with my whole heart even with the knowledge that everything is impermanent. 

Since I stopped drinking, I began inching my way closer to that connection and emotion I felt with my dad through songs. Once alcohol was out of the picture, a space and invitation opened up for me to feel and shed the weight of all the heartache I had been carrying around for so long. 

I set an intention that I was finally going to acknowledge the pain, cradle it, then release it from its dormancy inside my heart.

The first true healing act I did was build a playlist. I added every song I could remember that took me back in time to my memories with him. To this day, I still take walks around my neighborhood, play the songs and channel my emotions so that I can move through them. Sometimes I am hit with tears and longing, a sudden wave of chills up and down my arms, sometimes a sense of connection and peace. 

For me, using music to enter into my emotions is much less confronting. It’s like feeling the warmth of their presence within me without the glaring impact of looking them straight in the eye. 

This is how I found myself easing into my grief. Allowing it to co-exist alongside me as I started venturing into unknown terrain. I still continue to use this outlet and the messages I receive in it continue to be powerful in the healing process.

I believe the reason so many of us sensitive souls are drawn to music, films, and books is because they are portals to guide us into our own emotions through the art of storytelling. We can all see reflections of ourselves within the stories that exist all around us. We are pulled into the dynamic complexities of the human condition through the journey of others that draw subconscious parallels directly to our own hearts.

The Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones was a staple of my childhood memories connected to my dad. The hat, the movies…an iconic hero, the end of an era…

I recently experienced the closing chapter of Indiana Jones in the theater with so much love and emotion in my heart. 

The film hit me in so many ways. Seeing the progression of time on screen. The once young and spry Indi is now eighty-one and embarking on one final adventure. Through this arc of time, Indi is reunited with old characters and seeing their aged and weathered faces, brought tears to my eyes. Bearing witness to so much life already lived along with the rich history that bonded and brought them to this moment was very moving for me. Reflecting on how far they’ve come, I have an evolving new appreciation for aging and the markers of wisdom it brings. I wonder how the weathered years would sit upon my dad’s face if I could only gaze upon it once more. 

The Dial of Destiny is symbolic of an artifact that could travel through time and potentially change its trajectory. I contemplated this idea as I sat in front of the screen, with this hat on my lap. The same one that was worn by my dad for several decades. A treasured artifact that holds so much meaning, has traveled through time to land in this moment right here and now.  

In the wake of loss, I have discovered that we all have artifacts that hold an entire history and are often our most effective ways to bridge connections to the stories that remain in our hearts, waiting to be shared and brought back to life.  

It sat there, with me throughout the whole movie, a comforting and warming presence. This experience allowed me to time travel and experience emotional parallels through decades of memories I was previously closed off from.  And how in awe and amazed I was to be catching glimpses between dimensions within my own mind. Having created some space, I can now peer back into those memories and allow the joy to seep in between the tears. 

Losing my dad cannot be changed but the stories I share in his memory and the wisdom I choose to take with me continues to enrich my life and those of others through allowing myself to be vulnerable with my own heartbreak. 

The symbolism of endings

I don’t believe that we ever reach a definitive moment in our grief where an endpoint of closure is reached. I am learning throughout my own journey that grief is a fluid process that looks and feels different for everyone. We weave in and out of the stages with no particular rhyme or reason. 

I’ve learned to truly wallow in the moments of connection, peace, and acceptance within my grief process and welcome the floodgate of tears and anguish, letting them bring me to my knees at times. 

Choosing to stay rooted in that movie theater was symbolic of seeing my own grief through to the end. For all of the unfinished sadness, the times I never let myself lean in, staying until the final credit rolled across the screen was cathartic in so many ways. It symbolized my intention to be with my pain. To allow my life in all its ups and downs, play out before me. Acknowledging with a heavy heart, filled to the brim with so much love; the end of a chapter, never wanting it to end.

The gift of grief

Every once in a while, I am gifted with beautiful, full-circle moments such as this, that come from leaning into the pain. Although we cannot go back in time and change the events of our lives, I am learning that we do have the power to adjust how we choose to view them and to shift the meanings we make.

In my experience, the calling for me to be with my grief was inviting me to begin learning emotional resilience which was foreign to me up to this point in my life. 

To be able to choose for the first time, to hold steady and face my pain instead of continuing to look away is a gift. To find myself still standing in the aftermath, connects me to this incredible resilience that exists within every one of us. It’s hard, unsettling, and uncomfortable. If it wasn’t, then none of us would exert so much effort to avoid it. 

Grief comes in so many forms. To come out on the other side and receive its gift means we must also mourn past versions of ourselves. Acknowledging and allowing the discomfort that comes along with facing what hurts the most, will lead us through to healing. What I’ve found in my own journey is that disconnecting from the pain comes at a great price. That price is a disconnection from all emotions, especially joy. 

Cheryl Strayed shared these words in reflecting on the loss of her mom, and they have become the essence of my intention for embracing the pain of grief as well, “the only sense I’ve been able to make of learning how to accept that profound loss and to make it into something other than sorrow, is to make something beautiful of it.” 

This is my own personal experience of choosing to be with my pain, allowing it to embrace me through songs and symbolism. The movie, the hat, the tears, the connection, and the incredibly moving effect it all had on me has allowed me to embrace the beauty and the joy within the pain that exists within each one of us.

©Laura Weston 2023

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