Client Grief - Session 1

(Beep. Music fades in.)

Words have immense power over us. They were the creation of human minds. We gave them their meanings, but now, they hold meaning over us. Some more than others, right? There are some words we react to more strongly than we do others. There are words that stand to represent huge swatches of our lives. Our current states, as it were. There are words that could practically stand in for our names. 

And your word is grief.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But you don’t want to believe it. You want to push back against that statement because you’re not really grieving anyone. No one’s died recently. No one’s gone on some far flung adventure to the great unknown where they are surely or likely to die. No one’s… Well, no one’s really left you, regardless of how you define the word ‘left.’ 

You and your partner are still together. A declined proposal is not really the end of a relationship unless you let it be the end. You can decide that this is the end of the road. That there was only one fork in the path and if it won’t be taken, there is nowhere else to walk. But you didn’t decide to do that. You didn’t decide on that. She told you no, and you hung your head down in shame only for a moment. Then you picked it up again and mustered a small smile. 

You told her, “I get it. I do,” but you didn’t really get it. You held space for an explanation of what it is you understood, but she never asked for it. Instead, she extended her arms for a hug, which you gave her. Eagerly gave her, not happily. When you recount the moment to yourself you will say that it was “happily.” Because you wanted to hold her so badly. Because you were desperate for some sort of comfort, some grounding from her. 

“A scrap,” you called it. And then you chastised yourself for the thought. 

“It was rude,” you said. You didn’t say it was inaccurate.

You were bitter, you thought. You were lashing out at her because you were hurt. You would be less hurt tomorrow, you thought. And you weren’t wrong. The next day the hurt had scabbed over, and now that it was no longer exposed to the open air, the wound throbbed less. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

It throbbed less, and you felt better. Or you told yourself you felt better. It was better than asking yourself about the wound. You hardly noticed it was a wound. And when you did–usually in passing–you just thought it was a scratch. You got caught on something is all, as you stood up from your place on your knees. 

“That’s all it was,” you said, as you ignored the new gap within you. 

Something was in that crater, was it not? What was taken out of you? What is it that was removed? What was lost? 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I know a lot about grief. I know all different losses and all different forms. I know suffering of all sorts. I’ve experienced it first hand. I’ve lost people, pets, partners, and dreams. I imagined a life with someone, a woman. I imagined marriage and not necessarily children of our own but being a hub for all the nephews and nieces she and I kept accumulating. I imagined the sort of home I knew other people had. And it wouldn’t have been like that had I stayed. 

Life would have happened. Life would have kept happening. 

“Be grateful when life happens,” my father used to say. “Think about the alternative.”

It’s death, he meant. He met, eventually. And yes life would have been better. As messy as it could be. 

On that you can agree with me. You can agree that life happens, and plans change. What you don’t want to call it is grief.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

“I just need to be sad,” you said to her. “Give me space to be sad for a while.”

And what is that sadness by another name? No, it’s not that I’m mistaken. It’s that you won’t say the word. You need to say the word. So much of what comes next for you depends on saying the word. It is the trick to moving forward, the magic word that reveals the other path you have at your disposal. And until you see it, you can’t walk upon it. 

“But what if I don’t want to," you say. 

‘What if I will lose her,’ you ask, on this other road that you have not yet seen? 

And it’s a fair enough concern. But there’s more to lose on the path you’re on. You just haven’t seen it yet. You won’t let yourself see it. Will you, by chance, be willing to hear it?

(Music fades out. Beep.)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?