Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

"Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://np.reddit.com/r/Assist... | https://archive.today/CkLxT

For what it's worth, krapp's comment is better written but is what I'm talking about here.

What they're saying is that as a culture, we reason about grief using the tools and concepts of the medical industry. Because it's part of our culture, this is so automatic that it's almost hard to conceive of any other way. But it is indeed a choice to describe grief as a sort of labeled pain which can be explored using falsifiable scientific experiments, is amenable to treatment by medical professionals, is a problem representing a delta between a "normal healthy human" and their current state, etc.

We could just as well have a culture that treats grief as a normal part of the human experience. We could consider a person currently grieving as exactly as healthy and normal as someone playing the saxophone. We could (and some do) consider that the most appropriate people to offer help for grief be spiritual counsellors.

I'm not saying we should handle grief differently. I'm just trying to point out that what the author's saying is that it's a cultural choice the way we present and work through it socially. (But, for what it's worth, I do think we should handle it in a less medical way.)

If your partner died and the very next day a doctor said, "Here's a pill that will make you forget you were ever together and erase 100% of the pain. You'll feel amazing." Would you take it?