As Grief Is: Sitting with Loss, Asking for Help, and Suffering Together

By Danielle N. Sather

Let’s talk about grief.

For me, grief hits every year around the end of May. May 18th is the day I message one of my brilliant friend’s parents with no words. My Friend’s name is Sarah, and six years later, I still have no words. Sarah always knew how to make you laugh. She was the light that everyone was looking for on any given day. She was the lap upon which you could rest your head when life got heavy. She was always openly gracious and unabashedly silly; and then… May 18th happened. 

Her parents’ grief is endless…as grief is.

We are not supposed to outlive our children. We are not supposed to lose our parents in childhood or as young adults. We are not supposed to lose people to suicide, cancer, accidents, overdose, etc… yet, it happens all too often. My grandma quietly passed, at 99-years-old, in her sleep, and I always hoped that was the status quo. It’s not. What should be status quo is asking for help and seeking professional support, which is easier said than done. Even as I sit here, writing this story of my endless grief journey, I feel the weight and fear of the stigma around seeking support and sharing my struggles. That is also the reason behind my sharing; plus, sharing helps me organize my thoughts and confusion around grief.

Grief is quite weird.

Sarah passed away after a car accident and nobody knows how or why it happened. The loss of a loved one is filled with unanswered questions. Was there a deer on the road? Was she distracted? Did somebody cut her off? Could it have been suicide? Why THIS beautiful person? What could I have done differently to change this course of events? These unanswered questions can haunt us until we realize that the answer is… that there is no actual answer. We must accept that death is a part of life. We don’t have to like it (I’d be concerned if we did), but we do have to live it. Grief is inevitable; grief is a piece of the human experience; grief is the place where we all meet eventually, but how do we sit with it?

I still don’t fully know.

Every May 18th, after I message Sarah’s parents, I begin the countdown to my father’s death anniversary. June 22, 2015, was a day of painful rebirth for me. I had to relearn everything within this new reality of life after dad. Death anniversaries are so much more than that singular day the world shifted, though. They are the weeks before and after. These anniversaries are filled with lived, embodied, and painfully visceral experiences that transcend the ephemeral. They never leave us. The most frustrating thing for me is, if I don’t actively remember these closing chapters filled with the lives of those who helped shape me before finding their wings, my body certainly does.

Like clockwork, my grief is endless… as grief is.

I recall feeling myself heavy with the news of Sarah’s accident while bent and crooked over a closed toilet seat in a hotel somewhere in China. I don’t even fully remember being in China but I do remember the sounds of our collective grief. I feel the weight of friends collapsing into my arms. I feel the weightlessness of drifting over the Rocky Mountains as I anxiously travel to care for my dying father. I feel my hand around my brother's arm as my dad releases his last breath, grotesquely pushing the life from his mouth with his tongue. Every single year I feel myself crumbling to the ground, left alone in a stale hospital room while desperately cataloging my father’s lifeless body. I had to remember every wrinkle, mole, freckle, and curve of his face. And I do.

We see those whom we have lost in ourselves every day. This is one of the things that makes grief endless… as grief is. It is also one of the things that make our endless grief so painfully beautiful.

Sarah’s parents are two of the most resilient, creative, vulnerable, intelligent, and caring people that I have ever met in my life. It is no surprise that they are as magical as Sarah still is, even in her physical absence. I cannot speak about grief and loss without thinking of her folks. Through their own grief journey, they taught me that grief, though endless…. as grief is… is also a gift. Grief is the last thing people leave behind for us. Grief is all the love you hold for your loved ones lost. Grief is memory and humanity; it is connection. Grief is guidance and history. Grief is change and beauty. Grief is ugly and selfish. Grief is hunger and growth. Grief is life and death. Grief is endless, and grief is shared.

So, let’s talk about grief, endless as it is…

You are not alone. Your grief is valid, and while it may be endless… as grief is… we grow around our trauma and pain, which help to shape all the things that make us uniquely us… as grief does. Grief is hard for us all, but we don’t need to suffer alone or in silence. We need to Suffer Out Loud!

Danielle “Dani” Sather is the Executive Director of Suffer Out Loud, 503c non-profit…

Reach out to Suffer Out Loud if you need support finding a grief therapist. We all need a little help sometimes to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Light shines brightest when we find it in our darkest moments. Let’s find it together.