The Grief Cycle: Healing

"After a a great pain," writes Emily Dickinson, "a formal feeling comes . . . first chill -- then stupor -- then the letting go."

True.

But she fails to mention the rest. That aside from the blankness, you experience a host of other feelings. Despair. Glee. Anger. Relief. Rage. Incomprehension. Regret. Calm. Angst. Nostalgia. The list goes on.

One hundred and fifty years or so after Ms. Dickinson, we all know about the Grief Cycle. Or the Grief Roller Coaster, as it were. And we all know it's not linear. It's not crisp. Everything can be fine, and then one thing -- a comment, an object, a place -- brings the memories back up to the surface and makes the whole day bad. It's a cycle that certainly isn't circular, a roller coaster you can't just jump off of whenever you'd like to.

How to combat it? I wish I knew. There's the feel-it-now-or-you'll-feel-it-later strategy (good for when there are tissues on hand). There's the distract-distract-distract method, which also works well for a while. But there's also all this damn processing that has to be done: a long, arduous, cognitively-draining affair in which you analyze and re-analyze until you give yourself a headache and need a stiff drink. Then the procrastination strategy is employed.

What's also helpful is the everyone-goes-through-hard-times methodology. There is comfort in reading how the great poets and writers of the past are able to take raw emotions and transform them into something beautiful (poetry is better than all those angry or sad songs, I imagine). I can scarf down 19th century rhyme easier than self-help books.

There might not be any great epiphany that comes as a result of the bad things that happen in life. Maybe there isn't an answer to "Why?" It's like they say, it just is. But after experiencing all the turmoil, etc., there comes the letting go part. And that's going to be a good place to get to.