As you can imagine, there is a tremendous amount of variability in my work with patients and those who love them. Sometimes, we get to transition into the newness of “normal” after treatment and the meaning found in survivorship. But sometimes, my work transitions into end of life and ultimately, bereavement. Bereavement is a very strange and unexpected thing, and the unexpectedness, in the face of the tremendous loss, can be simply devastating.
There is a lot I can say about grief–its unpredictability and duration and non-linear quality. That while death is a certainty for everyone, it is also one of the most awe-inspiring and bizarre realities of our time on this planet–that someone who is so loved, who has made such impact, that was sitting a moment ago, can be gone. Poof. Our brains aren’t really equipped to process the impermanence, the ephemeral nature of our person-hood and so we are cast adrift into the sea of bereavement.
In the therapeutic sense, I sometimes think of grief like a wild sea. And someone is in it, floating, head barely above water. I drift up to them in a life raft and pull them in. But I don’t have oars. We float together, me using whatever I can to direct us, until we find someplace more manageable. Somewhere less tumultuous and unpredictable. There is no magic in grief work, there is only truth and pain and presence and witnessing. I don’t believe that the best grief therapist in the world can make the pain go away, but I do believe they can make it feel less terrifying. They can help us find some solid ground, even briefly, that reminds us of this life and what else we can connect to that has meaning and reminds us of who we are.
I think of grief as I do sea glass. Our hearts and spirits begin as a bottle or vessel of some kind–solid…functional. But when we lose someone we love, the glass is broken. We have all encountered broken glass. Most of us have encountered brokenness. Sometimes it fits neatly with its other pieces, but just as often, it has holes and places that don’t fit together anymore. The pieces are jagged. They are potentially dangerous. The brokenness also can be isolating. When we feel broken, we don’t want to or know how to engage with others in the same way that we did before. We are sharp edges, we too are encountering the sharpness.
The thing is, that if broken glass finds it’s way to the ocean, it tumbles in the surf. It rolls in the sand. The broken, sometimes deadly sharp edges begin to soften and erode over time, first rounding slightly and then softening into a lovely, rounded piece of glass that feels good in the hand. It maintains its weight, it maintains its color, but it loses all of the pointy, jagged edges that cut and hurt and wound. The glass doesn’t disappear, but the sense that it is merely a broken, dangerous thing does. Sea glass, while derivative of all sharpness and edges, becomes its own object.
To walk on the shore and find a good piece of sea glass is a wonder. The colors are muted and beautiful, and the texture and light that it holds feel like a bit of magic…a lucky talisman tossed at our feet from the sea.
Grief is heavy and sharp and hard and painful. It is overwhelming and almost devastatingly complete in its ability to alter how the world looks and feels and tastes and moves. It eases for a second, only to sideswipe you in the next. Like our sea glass, it feels like the world is covered in its jaggedness until the sea washes over and over and over, softening edges, eroding the painful corners. The erosion of the edges, the softening of the pain does not happen overnight. It is a process to convert brokenness to something less threatening.
Though I have been asked hopefully many times, “Won’t I just feel better with time?”. I believe that it is work and love and self-awareness and self-compassion and also of course, time that soften the edges of grief. A broken piece of glass, without the tossing of the ocean, the roughness of the sand, the hitting against the rocks, will never become sea glass. A broken piece of glass left on your kitchen table in one year will be…a broken piece of glass. The sometimes painful process is responsible for the conversion to something that has its own meaning and place and beauty. Grief may never totally subside. We may never stop hurting on some level, missing the people we have lost, wishing they were still here. But we can hold our sea glass, with its weight and light and history, and we can have a sense of where we came from and how we got to this less dangerous, less jagged place.
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Niloo says
I can’t say enough, how much I enjoy reading your blog. This one was one of the most beautiful way of explaining grief specially with your example of Sea Glass.
lorelei bonet says
Thank you, Niloo. So glad to know this resonated for you and I’m grateful for you to read it.
Vincent says
What a great article- I am so grateful – uncertainty and complexity when we are hard wired for certainty and simplicity.
I work at St Christopher’s in London and have found your analogy so useful.
lorelei bonet says
Hi Vincent, I hope that whatever rough waters you are on right now, that they settle and allow you to heal and move forward, whatever that looks like for you. Thank you for reading and for letting me know that my words mean something to you.
Patty says
Beautifully-crafted metaphors that capture the complexities and plasticity of bereavement and grief. As always, I loved every bit of it LLB.
lorelei bonet says
Thank you, Patty!
Erika says
Every post you’ve written has made me think of things in a new and interesting way. A hopeful way. I love your comparison between grief and seaglass, and how it softens with time. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a piece of seaglass the same way again.
lorelei bonet says
Thank you, Erika. I appreciate your reading.
Lizzie says
I love both of these metaphors: grief as being at sea and grief as sea glass. Love the image, too, of ragged sea glass left on a kitchen counter staying as such. Such helpful ways of thinking about bereavement.
lorelei bonet says
Thanks so much for reading, Lizzie!
Rebekah says
Just amazing! So true in every way, thank you for sharing this as a reminder! Thank you 🙂
lorelei bonet says
I am so glad to know this resonated with you. Thanks for reading!
Andrea says
This is the most powerful description of grief I have read, and I have read a lot! I have compared this experience to being swept around in the waves of the ocean. But this is the first time I have seen this comparison to broken glass. That is exactly how I often feel…jagged, broken and with sharp edges. So much so that sometimes I wonder why anyone would want to be around me during this time, even when people offer. You have reminded me that as I am being swirled and tossed around in this loss, I am also being healed, becoming less jagged….and maybe even losing some of my sharp edges. Thank you for this. It reminds me that as painful as this is, I am also healing.
lorelei bonet says
Andrea, thank you so much for reading. I am so glad that it resonated with you and helped you connect to your healing process.
Judie says
Thank you, your article touched the core of me. The journey of grief has been long and the only way I could explain it to others was to say the rawness is gone, so when you spoke of sea glass it resonated in my heart and head yes this is grief and the journey you must travel.
lorelei bonet says
Hi Judie, Thank you so much for reading. I hope that wherever you are in your process that the sharp edges are beginning to soften, even for short spells at a time. Be kind to yourself out there.