The Grief We Carry That Nobody Sees

Loss doesn't always look like mourning. Sometimes it looks remarkably like getting on with life.

There is a line famously associated with the late Queen Elizabeth II:

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

I've thought about that line a lot this week.

Last Sunday, my aunt died.

She was 54.

Bright, bubbly, a straight shooter, a lover of life and very often the life of the party.

Cancer took her far too young.

And then Monday came.

I got up and went to work.

There were tax returns to do, deadlines to meet, emails to answer and all the ordinary things that don't disappear simply because something extraordinary has happened.

That's one of the strange things about grief.

Most of the time, nobody can see it.

They might see it in those closest to a loss. The exhaustion. The tears. The people suddenly having to make arrangements and decisions they never wanted to make.

But for so many of us, grief simply comes along for the ride.

We go to work with it.

We make dinner with it.

We drive the kids around with it.

We answer emails with it.

We laugh with it.

We put on makeup with it.

And every now and then, something brings it rushing straight back to the surface.

A text message.

A song.

A photograph.

Someone asking how you are.

A memory you weren't expecting.

Or sometimes, the evening news.

This week, the world also said goodbye to Dolly Parton.

She was 80, and while I obviously didn't know Dolly, there was something about hearing the news that made me stop.

Then all the Dollyisms started appearing.

Quotes and sayings that have been repeated for years, some of which I hadn't even realised came from her.

Including one of my favourites:

“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

Well, of course that was Dolly.

Anyone who knows me knows I love a rainbow.

Maybe part of that goes all the way back to school.

I had a Geography teacher who was also the PE teacher. Given I wasn't remotely sporty, you might think that would have been a terrible combination for me.

But he loved Geography.

And so did I.

That's where I learnt about weather and became fascinated by what was happening in the sky around us.

In fact, becoming a meteorologist wasn't just one of those childhood ideas that came and went. It was the plan.

I chose my Year 11 and 12 subjects with the intention of getting into a Bachelor of Science and even did my Year 10 work experience at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.

Unfortunately, there was one fairly significant problem with my grand meteorological career plan.

Maths and physics really weren't my subjects.

Accounting, on the other hand, fitted into my timetable. I could do double-entry accounting, so that became the backup.

We all know how that turned out.

But my fascination with weather never really disappeared.

And there was something my Geography teacher used to say in class that has stayed with me all these years:

Not a week goes by somewhere in the world without a meteorological event.

Every time I see another major weather event or natural disaster, I remember him saying it.

And there has certainly been no shortage of reminders this week.

We've watched devastating scenes from the border of China and Tibet as communities have been overwhelmed by catastrophic flooding. Lives lost. People missing. Families waiting for news. Entire communities changed in moments.

And, as if the weather hadn't already made its point, there was even a tornado in France this week.

A tornado.

In France.

WHAT THE?!

Of course, my brain immediately went to Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz, because apparently that's where my brain goes when somebody mentions a tornado.

But real life doesn't end with a pair of ruby slippers and a trip back to Kansas.

When we watch these events unfold, we see places we may never have visited and people we have never met suddenly experiencing unimaginable loss.

And somehow, we feel something for them too.

It reminds me of watching the Boxing Day Tsunami unfold in 2004.

I didn't know those people either.

But I remember the feeling.

The disbelief.

The helplessness.

The grief.

And perhaps that's something we don't talk about very often.

Grief isn't measurable.

There isn't one correct version of it.

We can grieve someone we love deeply.

We can grieve somebody we've never met but admired from afar.

We can grieve alongside complete strangers when we see their world torn apart.

We can grieve something that happened decades ago when a song, a photograph or a memory suddenly takes us straight back there.

Apparently, we can even grieve fictional people.

Anyone around my age who watched A Country Practice probably knows exactly where I'm going with this.

Molly.

The couch.

Brendan and Chloe outside with the kite.

The screen going black.

And then...

“MOOOOLLLLLYYYY!”

I was a kid.

Molly wasn't real.

And yet show me that scene today and I will still cry.

Decades later!

What is that?!

But perhaps that's the point.

We feel things because something mattered to us.

And nobody ever really teaches us what we're supposed to do with all those feelings.

How long are you allowed to grieve?

How much time should you take off work?

Should you talk about it or stay quiet?

Should you offer help to somebody or give them space?

Is crying the right response?

What if you don't cry?

What if you find yourself laughing?

What if you have a perfectly lovely day in the middle of a terrible week?

Does that mean you aren't grieving properly?

I don't think there is a properly.

Mostly, we figure it out as we go.

And grief isn't only about death.

Sometimes we grieve what could have happened.

On Tuesday, on the way to football training with my son, a car overtaking another vehicle came towards us.

I had to brake to make sure there wasn't a head-on collision.

Nothing happened.

We were okay.

We kept driving.

But the shock of that moment stayed with both of us.

For a few seconds, you become very aware of just how quickly an ordinary day could become something completely different.

And sometimes grief is for something that hasn't disappeared altogether, but has changed.

I've watched someone I love spend much of the past year adjusting to a life that looks very different from the one he had twelve months ago.

Another health setback this week means another specialist and another thing to investigate.

There can be grief in that too.

Grief for your health.

Your independence.

Your plans.

Your routines.

The things your body once allowed you to do without thinking about them.

The life you thought you would be living.

And yet, what can we do?

We look for answers where there might be answers.

We adjust where we need to adjust.

And somehow, we keep going.

That's what struck me most when I looked back at this week.

Because amongst all of this...

I worked all week.

I did the washing.

There was football.

There were meals and appointments and all the usual things.

I finished my virtual Dublin walk.

My medal is now on its way.

And then I signed up for another challenge.

This time I'm heading - virtually, unfortunately - to the Côte d'Azur.

161 kilometres along the French Riviera.

I'm already ten kilometres in and have reached Saint-Tropez, and my first virtual postcard is beautiful.

I'm excited about it.

Does that mean I've stopped thinking about my aunt?

Of course not.

Does laughing at something funny mean somebody isn't grieving?

Does going to work?

Going for a walk?

Planning something to look forward to?

Putting on lipstick?

No.

Maybe that's one of the things we misunderstand about grief.

Life and grief don't take turns.

They happen alongside each other.

We can be heartbroken and still laugh.

We can be worried and still make plans.

We can be struggling and still turn up for work.

We can miss somebody terribly and still enjoy something new.

We can carry sadness and joy in exactly the same heart.

And from the outside, nobody may know any of it is happening.

Which brings me to September.

On Tuesday, I'll put on a lip colour and begin my seventh year participating in Liptember.

Thirty days.

Thirty different colours.

There will be pinks and reds and probably a few colours you would rather I didn’t wear.

We'll have some fun with it.

But underneath all that colour is something much more important.

We don't know what somebody else is carrying.

The woman sitting beside you at work.

The mum at school pickup.

The person serving you at the supermarket.

The friend who hasn't replied to your message.

The person smiling in the Facebook photo.

The woman wearing the lipstick.

Grief doesn't always look like grief.

Struggle doesn't always look like struggle.

And mental health doesn't have a particular face.

That's why conversations matter.

That's why checking in matters.

That's why kindness matters.

And perhaps that's why, after seven years, I still put the lipstick on.

Not because lipstick fixes anything.

It doesn't.

But sometimes a little colour can start a much bigger conversation.

And this September, that's exactly what I hope we do.

For my aunt.

For the people we love.

For the people we've lost.

For the people whose lives have changed.

For the people we have never met but whose stories touch us.

And for the person standing right in front of us who might be carrying something we cannot see.

Be real, not perfect. Be Kind. Be Brave. Be Yourself.

A double rainbow over Tooleybuc, Victoria. A reminder that the rain and the rainbow can exist at the same time - just like grief and life.