I'm OK, You're OK. Pretty Much.

Dear Rachel,

If I were ever to write a book on grief, I think it would begin with this sentence: It’s OK, you’re not really crazy.

Of course, this is a lie, of sorts. Grief is truly pathological, as Joan Didion points out in The Year of Magical Thinking. If a person thought and felt all the time as one does while grieving, that person would be deemed ill; he would be examined, diagnosed, medicated, and possibly confined. That this does not occur is due only to the fact that we view grief as “normal,” its aberrations accepted as part of the grieving process. Most of us eventually “overcome” grief and our “illness” ends—or at least, we once again become functional. (Some of us don’t. A few of us are permanently damaged and cannot resume something approximating a normal life.)

But, those unfortunate few of us aside, the grief-stricken are not truly mad. We’re all temporarily deranged in some way or ways, yes, but we’re not permanently, irrevocably insane.

In spite of that, those of us with little previous experience grieving feel as if we’re going insane. We have strange thoughts; we’re guilt-ridden, even when we have little reason to be. We’re unstable, disconnected from reality. We think, “How am I supposed to feel? Would a sane person feel this way?” We engage in magical thinking—believing that if we do certain things, act a certain way, our loved one will somehow return to us. We lose ourselves in fantasies of revenge. We carry on stoically—in control for a day, a week, a month, even, and then fall apart for seemingly no reason at all. We feel anger toward our deceased loved one: “Why did he go on that trip? She shouldn’t have been hanging around with those people! He knew better than to…” and on and on.

And then we feel guilty about having such thoughts.

For the grieving, it’s normal to be abnormal. If you’re grieving, you need to know that every strange notion, every unkind thought, every bout of self-pity, every breakdown, every paroxysm of guilt is normal. No matter how bizarre or uncharitable your thinking, it’s what happens when you grieve. The only thing that will heal you is time, and it takes some people longer than others; don’t let others push you into “getting over it.” There’s no rush, and no way to rush. You will heal, although not completely. The open wound will close and scar over, but the scar will always be there, and it will always ache—some days more than others, like a broken and badly knitted ankle that reminds you on cold, damp mornings that you once did yourself serious bodily harm.

The bottom line here is that you’re OK. You, like all of us who are grieving, get (and deserve) a pass.

Love,

Dad