The Privilege of Grief
A Birthday Love Letter to Self
Earlier this year, I had a birthday a few days after my brother made his transition. I usually host a fundraiser for Compassionate Atlanta on Facebook to commemorate my birthday, but I just did not have it in me. I took my birthday date down on social media as I was overstimulated and felt flooded with overwhelm.
I was too numb and sad to celebrate but I also knew that my brother would not like any of that type of drama. (He would have called it “drama.” LOL.) Therefore, I celebrated in the best way I know: I took to the keypad. I wrote to honor myself and my feelings on my birthday.
This weekend being Easter weekend and today, Holy Saturday, often a day of grief, I felt this was appropriate to share. This post has much more “religious” language than I usually share but I share the experience of my faith with you.
January 24, 2024
Dear Iyabo,
Today is a weird day, isn’t it?
It feels like we have one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. Today should be a celebratory day for me, but we don’t want to do that!
We would much prefer to be mired in the grief, sadness, and memories of our brother being “alive” and then, “dead” (whatever the heck that is!)
We want to pout and remember all the mishaps, traumas, and tragedies of the past few years and raise our fists to God and say, “Why me?”
Yes, we think it is not fair.
Yes, we think we have had more than our fair share of trauma and unncessary foolishness in life.
Yes, we think we deserve better.
Yes, we think we may be entitled to a life without loss or pain.
Really?
Yes, all that is true. That is how we think and feel AND right beside those very thoughts and feelings, sharing the same breath, the same neural pathways, and the same swirl gathering these emotions, dwells a Greater Truth:
Nobody is exempt from suffering. We all suffer at different times and for a myriad of things. You are not special and are not entitled to a life of ease only.
Grief is soooo weird. It feels so bad in its visceral descent. It is depressing and heavy. It is agonizing. It feels like sludge. Yet, it feels numb - a vast emptiness.
But ……..Sigh…..
It only comes because of Love. We first must love to have the privilege of grief. Yup, grief is a privilege.
Therefore, grudgingly, today, we choose to be profoundly grateful that:
1. We get to have the emotional capacity to feel the grief. Some folks are too hard-hearted to connect with their grief. We are grateful for the capacity to hold sadness and grief in this heart and this body. That means that over this lifetime, trauma and tragedy did not harden us. Instead, we chose to let it soften us and make us pliable towards connection, care, and community. What a grace!
2. We get to have the experience of grief. Some folks have not loved another to be able to experience the grief that comes with the loss of who was loved. Or some may not have the capacity to love another. We are grateful that we had something or someone so valuable in life that it hurts when he is lost or gone, or when the person’s season is over.
3. We get to have the support of our community amid grief. We are grateful that every hour of each day, we are reminded that we are not alone in this process. An hour cannot go by without a call or a text. The community constantly invites us to lean on them. Thank you, Beloveds.
4. We get to receive love because of our own grief. We are grateful that God has placed us among community, family, friends, and everyone - and they treat us with gentleness and kindness - expressions of God’s Own Divine Love - reflecting to us, and reminding us, that we must love self to be able to grieve properly. Indeed, we are worthy of grieving for another.
5. We get to enter into the teachings and beliefs we have received about the Love God had for Jesus, and therefore, for all of us. We are grateful that this mind can reflect, and connect with our faith during this time, and we are comforted that God has grieved loss too. To think that God grieves with us right now is absolutely amazing.
Grief is not evil. Greif is evidence of our fragility, our humanity.
Iyabo, remember, grief is not something to run away from. It is a celebration, not filled with “joy” as we often think of celebrations as.
But it is a celebration of pain - Not in a gory, victimy, ‘see my pain,’ ‘feel sorry for me’ way, but in a quiet, humble way, washed with cleansing tears, ushering us into the portal of connection with the Divine, The Great Mystery.
Nobody understands what this life is ALL about. We speculate. But when we yield to grief, we yield to that “Mysterium Tremendum.” Even grief is a mystery.
Today, we embrace this privilege of grief by bowing and saying, “Thank you Grief, for your visitation. Stay as long as you need to. You are welcome here. You are evidence that I have loved and that he was an amazing brother to me.”
We are also aware that grief is not the same as paralyzing fear. We may fear the future without him, but we are not afraid. Grief is for the living.
We change. Our identity is changed by the death of those around us. But vhange is ok. We always want to hold on to what we know. We want him back. Here. Now. But that is not happening. We choose to continue to love everything that we knew, every memory, every picture, every single thing. Love continues onward.
Really? What the hell!!!! Where did all that come from? Sometimes when I write, I don’t know where it comes from. This? I don’t know where it came from.
Anyhow, if you would, please donate to my brother’s memorial fund. It means a lot to us. Any amount is amazing.
Thank you for being part of my life.