When we think of grief, we most readily think of a wounded psyche. A beloved person has died, a void opens up, getting ready to swallow you whole. The soul, or the mind, or whatever you want to refer to it as, lives in the body, however. The body too is tormented by grief.
I’ve known grief before, but losing my father has hit me hard on a profoundly physical level. I have read, before, of how widows and widowers never seem to get warm enough. I have seen constant exhaustion in others affected by grief.
For me, grief has resulted in tension. It’s hard to sleep. When I do go to sleep, my dreams are often blighted by seemingly random nightmares. Lack of sleep has, in turn, produced stress-induced auditory and visual hallucinations — I thankfully immediately recognize them as such, but the first second is always jarring.
I throw up my food a lot. You’d think I’d at least get thinner (cue grim laughter here), but instead I’ve gained weight around the belly (a stress response, my doctor thinks). I am constantly exercising to beat back the weight, but my muscles scream in agony no matter how many massages I get and how much stretching I do.
The death of our loved ones doesn’t seem to make much sense to us either
New areas of tension have opened up. I’ve never carried this much in my calves before, for example. I didn’t even realize what was going on at first, and was hence unable to mitigate it in a timely manner. The pain has been excruciating.
As my physical therapist has suggested, grief is like traveling to a whole new country, and the best way to help yourself along is to expect the unexpected. Your body can behave in bizarre ways. It can adapt new patterns — not all of them particularly good ones (falling asleep at 5 p.m. and waking up at 7 p.m.? Why? What is the point?). It can feel alien, even repulsive.
Random body dysmorphia has really kicked up a notch with me too. I broke down in tears because a friend commented on how good I looked, and when he expressed surprise at my reaction, I said, “I keep seeing an ugly monster in the mirror.” It makes no sense, right?
But then again, the death of our loved ones doesn’t seem to make much sense to us either.
As a proponent of the biocentric model of the universe, I know that death is not the end. But I also know that our perspectives of death are intimately linked to our physical nature. Left behind in our bodies, looking at the world with our eyes, we can’t see our loved ones anymore. We can’t hug them. We can’t smoke a cigar with them and look at the stars and hear their chuckle as they near the punchline to an especially atrocious dad joke.
This is why grief is so intensely physical. We’re grappling with a profound absence that we register with all of our senses. The love remains, of course, because love is greater than the body, and is in no way quantifiable. But while grief rages, and even after it settles, our love is tinged with pain.
I’ve been lucky enough to find a physical therapist who specializes in dealing with this pain as it settles into the muscle. I never in my life thought I’d have to do this, but if you’re going through something similar, please consider giving it a try. Consider the way a body carrying a wounded soul is weighed down by the experience.
Take care of yourself. The dead wouldn’t have it any other way.
Image credit: Denis Degioanni