It makes sense that grief is what love grows into when it has nowhere to go.Credit:Hugh Stewart
In my mind,one of the most profound utterances on the most unbearable of feelings came from the most unlikely of places:the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For those of you who think it’s all superheroes and hammers,you really are missing out.
Let me explain. Wanda is a character from the franchise and there’s a moment when she’s sitting next to a man who would later become her husband. After she’s been orphaned and loses her only sibling,he says to her,“But what is grief if not love persevering?” No wonder she marries him.
It makes sense that grief is what love grows into when it has nowhere to go. All feelings (uncomfortable or not) mutate into uglier versions of themselves:shame into anger,fear into fight,flight,freeze or fawn. But love? The most supreme of feelings,the best thing in the world,the feeling that unites us and surely is the only point of anything,makes way for the isolating vacuum of grief.
All of us,if we’re lucky,will outlive our parents. We will outlive our pets. We will change jobs,lose contact with friends and move cities – if we live our lives to the fullest. So why then don’t we know how to cope when these things inevitably happen?
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There’s no argument here for living in a state of cat-like readiness for the next bad thing to happen,but I do think we should be better equipped to process grief ourselves and,then,to cushion the blow for those around us when they’re grieving.
I didn’t know about the irrationality of it. That it would take me months and months to bring myself to throw out my dead pug’s harness. Even though I’ve moved house,and how before then it sat on the floor of my car staring me in the face every time I had to drive somewhere as a painful reminder of the love I had for the little chunk of fleshy,puggy goodness that it once held.
It’s completely pointless and makes very little sense. But that is what grief is. Reluctance to make a decision that you know will probably help you. Reluctance to accept the reality of the situation:which is,that life is happening around you and has changed in a way you didn’t expect and will never go back to how it was.