Despair

On the long drive home from my father-in-law’s 90th birthday party in Shropshire (where I valiantly held it together for almost three days before collapsing into a puddle of tears), I listened to a podcast about recovering from grief. In it I learned that the famous “five stages of grief” model has been largely debunked. Instead there are currently considered to be three sort-of stages: protest, despair and learning to live with grief. 

Amusingly, the host of the podcast, who is famous for being one of those irritating types who tries to optimise the shit out of everything, was put firmly in his place by grief expert Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor. “You can’t optimise your way out of grief, Andrew.”

So I didn’t derive any comfort from this interview, but I did learn something interesting. The “point” of despair, in the context of grief, is that it moves you on from the tempting but fruitless activity of “protest” or denying the death of your loved one. It forces you to stop imagining that they are still around somehow, or believing that you will get to see them again and gain some closure. Despair is the unbelievably painful process of weaning yourself out of this belief and understanding that they are truly gone. Once you get into this phase, you will really suffer, but there is an opportunity to begin learning how to be without them.

Another interesting fact was hearing how dangerous grief can be for one’s health. The chance of having a heart attack is doubled for grieving spouses in the months after death (and indeed, I had scary heart palpitations for a long time). Then there is increased risk of inflammation, high blood pressure, poor sleep, over-drinking and a host of other problems. Basically, if you know someone who is grieving, keep an eye on them. 

After the actual death of your loved one, the second worst thing is the gradual realisation that the grief is never going to end, actually. I talk to a lot of bereaved people (I think of it as “widow club” but in fact it includes widowers, those grieving lost babies and children, people who’ve been through a traumatic breakup and various other people who’ve been repeatedly punched in the face by life). Some of these people are circumspect and skirt around how bad things clearly still are for them. Others tell me straight. 

Eight months on I still find myself plagued by unpleasant symptoms; the latest of which are fatigue, weight gain and rosacea, a horrid skin condition that makes my face and chest flush red in stressful situations and gives me broken blood vessels on my face. I’ve decided to reduce my alcohol consumption to pretty much zero, as I can see it’s contributing to all three problems. Not drinking makes me feel like I have a little more control over my life, but takes away a significant prop that I haven’t yet been able to replace. 

While I’m falling down and picking myself up I reflect on the information that loving someone deeply is not just emotional: it’s physiological. When the object of that love evaporates, the pain comes from a frantic need to express the love but an inability to place it anywhere. I read somewhere that “grief is love with nowhere to go” and that is perfectly apt. Every day, I long to touch him, to tell him things, to ask for his help, to taste some food he has cooked or to hear him pottering around in the background. I have tried to transfer this longing onto other things, living people, but it won’t move. There is nowhere else for it to go.