When Grief Hits a Fork in the Road

Our grief will come face to face with the fork in the road many times as we struggle through the living of our loss. There are times it will be so subtle we will barely recognise it and yet others where it's so obvious to us there can be little doubt of where we are. We are at a place of choice.

This place is nowhere to be found in the raging and tumultuous months of early grief. We are totally floundering in the pain of our loss and trying to find our lifeline which will give us a breath, nothing more. We don't care two hoots about anything else; we are surviving in the midst of incredible pain. We often wish we weren't!

The fork in the road comes a little while later and it comes for a number of reasons. In our brokenness we begin to recognise and consider a number of things:

Pain is not the only legacy we want of our loved one. We want their life to mean more.

There can be no going back, as much as we would want to.

We want our life to include more than just pain alone.

We understand that we had no control over what has happened in our life but we do have control over how we respond to what has befallen us.

We will find the courage and determination to somehow move forward finding ways to remember how they lived not just how they died.

It never means we won't be unbroken. It's never about denying the sadness. It never means we won't be in pain, we will. The sorrow we feel at losing the physical presence of our loved one will stay in the fabric of our heart and soul forever. What it means is that we begin to become more knowing about what life will mean for us now, what we can control and what we can't. We take pause to ask ourselves, "Do I want to stay broken forever?" This is our big fork in the road.

Some of us will choose to reinvest in life once more, to re-enter life and experience it fully again. It will not be easy but we will begin to find moments of meaning and to awaken the simple pleasures we used to enjoy. We will begin to grow ourselves around our brokenness; despite the sadness we will live. We may not know how, there is no definite map that shows us exactly where to go, but we are walking forwards. Our loss and our life together.

For some of us that step is just too daunting too unreachable. It's something we cannot fathom. Living a life without our loved one is something we resist with all our hearts. If our pain is all we have left, if our pain is what binds us to them then we will keep it uppermost in our life forever. We've lost them once we won't lose them again; this is all we have left.

Each of us will reach our fork in the road and choose as individuals walking our own path. For some of us we will bump up against the forks and be unable to move, or need help to take a step. It is not easy, can never be easy, but it is possible.

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