Working as a palliative care physician, I have been no stranger to grief. Yet, it wasn’t until one of my closest friends lost her 2-year-old son unexpectedly that grief took on a different meaning to me.
In the days following the news, I sat dumbfounded and hollow, trying to figure out how to communicate what I was going through and, undoubtedly, what she was going through 100x my grief. People don’t really care to hear platitudes when they are grieving. There aren’t any statements I’ve found that bring comfort, and even the very genuine “I am so sorry” or “I have no words” can’t take away the pain. I decided in those dark days to try to illustrate my feelings.
Of course, the heart is central, as one of the organs in which we seem to feel things. The actual physical sensation of my heart being squeezed caused an ache in my chest that I tried to capture with a rope. You’ll see the actual indenting of the heart in a squeeze by the rope. Out of that deep emotional ache comes the tears that seemed in those days to come unbidden.
There is something more complicated in grief for me than just sadness and tears. I noticed conflicting states, depicted as fire and ice. At times, hot, raw tears and sadness engulfed me, threatening to overwhelm and take over like a runaway fire. At other times, there was a hollow coldness, partly in shock and disbelief, but other times because there was a need to “freeze” the sadness to be in the world. I still had to work, take care of my kids, and interact with the clerk at the store. The battle inside, from cold to hot, was very apparent in those days.
There are 2 more things I wanted to depict in the piece. One was the hourglass in the center. I knew, even while mourning, that time would change the nature of the grief. Time would change the amount of tears and the nature of the ache in my heart. But I also needed to acknowledge the everlasting nature of the sorrow. For that, I used the linear lines headed off into eternity. I hoped to create a testament to the longevity and permanent change that grief brings.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said, “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”
It has been years since Thomas left this world, but when I see this piece, I’m transported back to that time. And just as I tried to depict back then, my heart squeezes and a tear forms, and I miss him, but more than that, I miss what could/should have been. The fire of emotions threatens to come back, and once again, wars with the ice trying to shut it down. Elisabeth was right; I am not the same, nor would I want to be.
In Memory – Thomas John Giffin 3/3/11 – 12/12/12
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