"If you're going through hell, don't stop!" - Winston Churchill

Some ask themselves: How do you get out of such a hole? How do you deal with this crushing grief? How can you write a book like that? I don't think that's an easy question to answer. Because everyone experiences times of grief, many researchers have tried to get to the bottom of these questions. In any case, one thing is clear: grief is beyond our control!

I can't imagine that we would just be given a recipe for coping with grief with all the individual ingredients on the side. It would be unusual to outline the grieving process like assembly instructions for a new desk. Because it is not enough to look around carefully in all directions and make sure that all parts are assembled in the right order in the right place:

First you go through a period of anger; then you repress what happened; soon after you sink into a long depression in which you try to get your life together again and again; until you finally – voilà! – has come to terms with everything! No, the whole thing is much more difficult, more personal, like an unmistakable fingerprint with some universally valid characteristics: very different, but very similar. The individual mourning phases are not separated as clearly in one author as in the research of another. Add to that the complex circumstances, the emotional readiness, the individual personality and the physical vitality, and you have a grid that we can no longer fully understand with our reason.

So did we. The months after the accident had completely changed our lives. The darkness surpassed everything that had been experienced so far and could only be analyzed and recognized in retrospect. In the midst of the storm, there is little light and even less hope of survival.

But although the storm overwhelmed us both, we both grieved differently. Penny dealt with it differently than I did. As a mother and a wife, she felt everything in ways I didn't quite understand. We went through the pain together, but it also separated us. We had no choice but to master it both alone and together. He lurked around every corner, and our emotions threw us from one wave of pain to the next. What parable could I use to describe him?

A parable makes it clear that we hoped to process the grief through our determination and personal choices; however, another simile seems to point to something outside of us, as if something or someone is carrying us through, working on us and in us. Those who have already mourned themselves will surely somehow recognize themselves in both parables. Therefore, anyone who survived the crisis can hardly be proud of it. Maybe that's why there are so few practical courses in coping with grief, because one rarely brags about having overcome grief. Death seems to go hand in hand with humility. He makes us all equal as human beings! Therefore, with my reflections, I try to simply explain my feelings.

Soldier in the long war

The first parable is a long war in which soldiers struggle for months and years with victories, losses, wounded, amputations, and attacks. There are brief lulls, followed by waves of desperation and frantic activity with the sole aim of staying alive. The struggle to literally get up every morning is a continuous victory: living in the face of death. The strong desire to curl up and just cry at all the bloodshed around us sometimes keeps us from going insane. But if we fought desperately for survival, then the decision to try one more day despite the hopeless state of siege, another battle won. Then we push forward defiantly, believing firmly that we can survive—but only to do it all over again.

Ultimately, the direction of the war is decided in those moments when the decision to persevere and to advance into the unknown is made. Still, the battles relentlessly pelt everything that makes us who we are, and in the end we changed. With every loss lives death. life dies When the struggle for survival is over, we realize that our life is no longer there: we have become something else. All that remains can only be the shell of what we once were. And yet this shell has learned to function undeterred moment by moment and - to actually exist. The will to survive has brought life out of death.

Learned resilience pushes forward like an amputee stepping out of the hospital into the daylight with the help of a crutch or prosthesis, mustering up the courage to move cautiously and painfully toward whatever comes next. So our cases were still alive!

Shipwreck on the sea bottom

Or perhaps we are like warships and destroyers, resting impassively on the seabed as evidence of lost battles, encrusted in the most glorious coral, swarming with underwater creatures. Something has emerged from the brokenness. The shell of our old identity can eventually be filled with something new. war destroyed. War creates too. The new "we" sees things differently and feels life in ways that were previously unfamiliar.

We have the choice of how we want to react. The first parable shows the value of processing, all help, and hard work so that we don't end up getting stuck in the grieving stage and never really being able to live again. In this parable, Penny and I were greatly blessed by Frank and many friends who helped us get through this war. Various books also helped us a lot to make the right decisions to "win" the battle and accept our new life.

Escape from the pit

But the next parable differs considerably. It is like a wild animal trying to climb the walls of a pit higher than it can climb. It's not their fault that they're trapped and have little chance of survival. With every leap and every stretch, it seems to be wasting its energy on the unforgiving walls. The heart beats, the lungs wheeze, muscles tense and contract. The more the animal tries, the more it seems to fail. Sometimes it finds a ledge, but it's not stable enough to support its weight. rums! Always pain and failure. The dark cloud of earth and stones falls on the poor, hapless being, covering him with a layer of dirt as well as the obvious desperation that takes possession of his heart.

Attempts to escape are feverish at first, then lose strength. Finally, it seems to give up in the face of reality. It will never escape from the pit. Hopelessness overshadows the living being. Desperation is spreading.

But then something happens. Like an unforeseen earthquake, the animal begins to climb again. It fights and jumps against the wall again and again. Like a mythical beast that will not die, it fights to survive day after day, and it survives! Something is happening.

The rocks and dirt that fall off the walls with every jump pile up on the ground and eventually (it may seem like an eternity to us) the distance to the edge of the pit decreases. From the newly gained elevation on the pit floor, the cycle repeats itself: despair, hopelessness, discouragement. The animal almost loses hope. NEARLY. Greater determination, more dirt and rocks, until finally hope peeks over the pit and an emaciated animal clings to it, ready to fight for another day of survival.

In the months after the accident, both parables applied to me. I can identify with the soldiers who fought for survival and sometimes thoughtlessly made the next sortie. With each hostile gunfire of emotion and change, hopelessness and despair literally wrested the life out of me until I feared I was dying. I also experienced those brief moments of hope that broke through the darkness, only to be thrown to the ground by a new barrage of horrific memories and shattered dreams. As pain, confusion and tears drained my life, all I wanted to do was give up and die. But then, when hope was gone, something mysteriously stirred in a corner that I could neither explain nor control. Something larger than I could perceive suddenly pulled me forward, urging me to stand up one last time.

When Penny and I were hurled into our new world where grief was our captor, we were just struggling to survive. Sometimes the battles happened obviously and outside of us. Another time they raged between us. On other days, just getting up in the morning was like a revolution.

effect on memory

I noticed changes in my personality and memory. Before the accident, I was a spunky, happy person. After that I was subdued and felt guilty when I had to laugh. It felt like I was denying the lives of our children and that we had lost them. It literally felt like part of me had died that day too, even though I was still walking around. My carefree, sanguine, extroverted nature changed.

Another time my memory failed me. During our travels, for example, the idea of ​​paying someone a short visit came to me. I told Penny and we took the exit. Just a few minutes later, as I was standing at a stop sign, I suddenly couldn't remember where we were going! it was crazy We both seemed to be losing our short term memories. In the years to come, we noticed that our long-term memory also had to accept losses. Whole sections of our lives were gone. The effect of grief on the brain is powerful.

memory stealer

Sometimes I did just fine and thought I was going to lick my wounds and get over it. Then, out of the corner of my eye as I drove past, a familiar restaurant was being renovated. Inside was a ball pit where I used to play with Caleb and Abigail when Dad had to watch them. In such cases I would order an OJ so that I could visit the restaurant and stay warm when it was cold outside in Wisconsin. The memory of Caleb laughing at the bullet fight made me grin cautiously. The joy of Abigail flopping backwards into the balls, looking into my eyes to make sure nothing bad would happen, widened my smile and whisked me away to that happy time and that happy place. But now I could see workers pouring new screed in that corner to make room for restaurant tables. With a new name and a new management, the Kugelbad was no longer needed. The workers were just doing their duty and had no idea their work was robbing me of this sacred place. Without warning, I fell into a week-long depression as another beloved memory was ripped from my life.

Some days we had nothing to give each other nothing and everyone else at all Nothing. We negotiated with life and prayed that the Messiah would return soon so that we could see our children again. We tried to occupy ourselves, but no matter how fast we ran, the grief was quicker. We couldn't escape her.

Dancers in the ballroom

It was like we were locked in the ballroom of despair. Into a death ball that was in full swing. Forced to stay, we often danced with repression. We twisted and turned away from the brutal facts of our loss and tried to deny the song the orchestra was playing. With each repeat of the chorus, we grew more exhausted and angry. When would the next song finally start? Eventually we evaded no longer, looking forward to the brief pauses in the never-ending song of hopelessness. As the notes echoed through the hall with the darkness as a motif, the depression quietly put its hand in our pockets and stole our dearest possessions - our memories. Over time, the riches in our treasury diminished. With each passing day, we felt like we couldn't remember Caleb's and Abigail's faces as well as we had the day before. Her laughter, her smile, was drowned out by the incessant drumbeats of despair. Then the anger wanted to react. Desperately he attacked all who were near and tried to get back to the land and time of hope. But nothing worked. The music only got louder and the tide of reality pushed us back until we were simply haggling over a short and painful visit and trying again later. Then the dance would start all over again. The circle seemed to be infinite. Hope had long since left the ballroom.

So we turned. Again and again. Anger. Depression. haggle. Push away. When the fog of time lifted and the weeks turned into months, we pushed ourselves to start over. We fought, made decisions, lost hope, picked ourselves up only to fall again and prayed, "Oh God, if you exist, please don't let us both be devastated at the same time, or we will be never make it!«

God heard us.

continuation                Part 1 of the series                 In English

From: Bryan C. Gallant, Undeniable, An Epic Journey Through Pain, 2015, pages 76-83

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