What They Don’t Tell You About Grief

Written by Charlie Rowe

One thing I wasn’t expecting going into the new year was losing my best friend in the entire world, my mom. I remember how optimistic I was about 2024, as I stood around in Philly with my best friend and her friends. Everyone was smiling in the streets as fireworks were going off around us. I remembered thinking to myself “this is going to be the best year yet”, but little did I know that on January 7th that alternate idea I had built would shatter.

I’m not immune to grief. In my 26 years of life I have lost many close friends, coworkers, grandparents, pets, aunts, classmates, and so on in various ways. In a weird way, I’m almost prepared on how to grieve someone or something. It’s not my first rodeo for sure. Some people lose their parents when it makes sense; when they’re older, perhaps sick, and have lived a full life. But for others, like my sister and I, they lose their parents completely out of the blue. My mother had no illness or anything detectable that we could’ve prepared for the end, so I definitely was not in any sense prepared for the literal and figurative mother of all grief.

On my half a year journey tackling the beast of all burdens, I’ve heard a lot of the same advice and anecdotes such as “healing isn’t linear” or “it’ll get better” or “she’s with you always” or, my least favorite, “you’re so strong”/”you’re so brave”. While the intentions are always with a kind heart, hearing the same kind of fluff over and over again can get so frustrating when you don’t want words, you just want your loved one back. With all of the things I have been told, there’s a lot I have discovered on my own about grief that no one told me. I hope if you’re grieving, you can find some comfort within this.

The world will go on. Fast.

This was the one that scorned me the most. Something I still get angry about. When I went back home, I was lucky to spend a couple weeks with my family. Grieving, taking care of post-mortem things for my mom, reminiscing, looking at old photos, and just hanging out and eating lots of take-out. I had day and night to be stuck in this new reality of mine and ignore everything else. It was nice, it was welcoming. My mother’s death had an impact in this setting.

When I returned back to my apartment and to work, it was business as usual. The Bills, my mom’s favorite football team, had games to play. I had to go to work and do work things. My master’s program that I had just started ran as usual. It was in very stark contrast to what I was experiencing at home. Obviously, there was a huge effect on everyone who knew and loved her, but to no longer be surrounded by that group was something that I wasn’t ready for. It is a very frustrating feeling to have your whole world shattered and uprooted, and it barely affects the everyday.

Many people told me I didn’t have to continue my second semester of my master’s program and that I can take a break. Having witnessed the fact that life will go on, I felt like I had to as well. I respectfully declined. When people asked me why I didn’t take a break from school, I countered with “Well I still have to go to work, why would I stop school?”. And as the world kept spinning, so did I.

Bereavement time is never enough.

An extremely eye-opening thing about this whole process has been how little time you get off from work to grieve. I only got three days of bereavement. I was shocked. As someone who moved away from their hometown, and had to build in travel time for my return, I was lucky my vacation time had just restarted so I used that to stay at home a little longer.

As I discussed this with my friends in other jobs and other fields, that’s not far from the normal. Some places don’t give any bereavement at all. I lived in the same state still, but what about those that would have to fly across the country? Three days to grieve any sort of loss is just never enough, nor is a week, or even the two and a half weeks I got.

Grief is taboo.

I’ve heard a lot of people say “there’s only two things guaranteed in life: death and taxes” as a joke, but it does hold some truth to it. Death happens to everyone and everything eventually, so it shouldn’t be hard to talk about, right? In sharing with peers and coworkers and whoever else I’ve spoken to about my mom the past almost 7 months, I’ve found that discussing everything surrounding grief and death is so hush-hush, one of the biggest elephants I’ve ever experienced in a room.

I remember specifically walking home from class one night with some friends after the spring semester had just started, and we were catching up from a month apart. I dreaded it, because I knew I couldn’t “hide” what happened during my winter break, but a part of me felt I should. One of them asked me what I did and I awkwardly had to say “oh, yeah, uh my mom died so I went back for the funeral”. What once was a conversation of laughter and fun turned somber and maybe a little awkward on both ends.

It’s hard to come face to face with grief. I’ve gotten better at speaking on my grief now and do so a little more freely, but sometimes I still catch myself wondering if it would be better if I didn’t bring up this major trauma to spare the discomfort. But why would I want to diminish my feelings? Why would I want to deny a whole part of me is missing?

Grief is isolating.

With being so young, and grief being a touchy subject, the weight of it can feel super isolating. It’s not that I don’t have amazing friends who have done so much for me, or that I can’t feel the support of everyone who has offered me any sort of condolence or help in any form. I feel it all. But what I don’t feel as much, is the feeling of being fully understood.

People can sympathize to some extent, but not many people I know have lost a close loved one in the exact same manner or had the same type of bond. Most of the people I know who have lost their parents lost them at an older age. It seems like we should be able to connect but that too feels isolating because they don’t know what it’s like to navigate this as a young adult, who now feels like a scared little kid.

I think grief being taboo has something to do with this feeling of isolation as well. I’ve found myself many times missing my mom, feeling heavy emotions, but not wanting to vocalize that because “what if my friends are sick of me talking about it” or “what if they’re not comfortable dealing with this right now”. As I’ve already said, I have an amazing support system I wouldn’t trade for the world, but I think the social norm of grief gets into my head and I stay quiet and lonely instead of spilling my soul.

Finding community that has gone through it truly helps. And hurts.

Something I started to do in order to not feel as isolated was joining a bunch of social media groups catered to those who lost a parent at a young age. This has helped tremendously as I’ve felt seen and and more comfortable to share my story beyond the realm of my friends and family who may not understand completely. It’s refreshing to share stories or comment on other’s stories and see such a close knit community of complete strangers helping each other through the worst bits of their life.

On the flip side of that, however, it can hurt even more sometimes as well. There have been many nights I’ve scrolled through these groups innocently reading posts when all of a sudden they evoke the pain all over again, and I’m crying in my bed or on my couch or wherever I may be. These groups are nice to feel less alone and have incredible intentions, but sometimes they can hurt too.

Sometimes, even briefly, you can lose your most fierce passions.

Ever since I was born, my heart has beat for music. I have forever and always loved music, and that will never stop. But over the last couple of months I have noticed through my grief that music doesn’t interest me as much as it always has. I am an active and abrasive listener of music, but I’ve found myself passively listening to music more than ever. Sometimes, I don’t even want to listen to music at all.

I have a music loving friend who lost her mother when she was in high school, and I remember that she couldn’t listen to music for months after the loss. She and I both traveled all over the country for concerts with our moms, and sometimes if the wrong song came on shuffle it was just a reminder of those memories and it hurt too much to risk.

After my mom passed, my favorite artist announced a new album coming out, and while I was extremely excited, a part of me was so sad that my mom wouldn’t get to hear it. Sharing passions with your loved one and then experiencing those things without them is a tough bridge to cross, but the passions do come back. They come back slowly and gently, but they don’t ever truly leave.

In sharing that your loved one has passed, you’ll hear different versions of them that you never knew existed.

Since losing my mom, I have heard so many stories of her that she never told me and seen so many pictures of her in her youth. It’s sad, because it paints a different image of this person you knew and loved and you wish you could talk about it with them. I heard one story of my mom that had me belly-laughing, and I just wished I could’ve spoken to her about it and made fun of her.

Despite the sadness it can stir up, it’s also a warm hearted experience. You get to hear different versions of them, how they impacted people and who they were before you knew them. So many stories of my mom were about how kind she was, how funny she was, or how selfless she was. I had such a wonderful time hearing all these stories and it filled my heart with love and joy in a time where it was a little hard to feel that way. I always knew she was a beautiful human inside and out, but seeing how many people also saw her that way was heartwarming.

It is possible to be happy and sad at the same time.

Before losing my mom, one thing I struggled with so heavily and actively worked on in therapy is the idea of “both and”. The idea that two things can be true, like you can be happy and sad at the same time. So this concept was not new to me, but under grief it found a new lens. Since January, I have had so many happy moments. I turned 26 with my best friends by my side, I went to amazing concerts, I got to show my niece around my campus, I finished a tough semester, my best friend moved close to me, I got a new apartment, and so much more. I experienced many wonderful moments filled with joy, but paired right with that is sadness holding my hand.

In many of those moments, I wanted to tell my mom about what was going on and the fun I was having. Her missing presence was definitely noted. But sometimes, feeling happy just makes me feel guilty. You’re in the middle of laughing and you think to yourself “Why am I laughing? She’s not here to witness it” and this guilt hits you for feeling something that your loved one can no longer feel. It sounds so silly, but it’s so complex and hard to make sense of. You get better dealing with being happy and sad, happy and guilty, or any two conflicting emotions at the same time. It just takes a while to fully grasp it and be okay with it.

Who you were before is different from who you are now.

Everything you experience changes you in some way, but dealing with loss and going through grief is a major blow. Since losing my mom I have become so much more anxious, my mind is a jumble, and my emotions are everywhere. It can be hard to walk around and act normal when you feel like you’re a chicken that got its head cut off. It’s been a while I’ve sat with this grief and I still don’t feel like “myself”, but that’s the point. I won’t be the same as I was before losing my mom, I won’t even be the same as I was yesterday. And that’s okay.

When I’ve dealt with grief in the past, I’ve seen it as a one-stop shop of sadness and negative emotions. Through the biggest loss thus far, I’ve seen it’s more complex than that, just as humans are. Grief is messy, it’s sad, it’s angry, it’s weird, it’s happy moments, it’s contradicting, it’s everything and nothing. What works for one person’s grief might not work for another. It’s not easy to navigate grief, and because of that changing is inevitable as you find yourself growing with it. Grief may be all the things I mentioned for me, but it can be different for you. If you are going through grief, I hope you’re able to easily navigate the waves of loss with love and support, and that you don’t shy away from your grief.

In a lot of ways, grief can have negative effects on your mood and how you present to the world, I’ve seen it reflected in myself. But that doesn’t mean grief cannot provide positive changes as well. I may have become more anxious or emotional in some areas of my life, but I’ve also tried to put more good into the world. I’ve challenged myself to compliment at least one person a day, and seek out more opportunities to help animals in shelters or with rescues. I’ve helped people who didn’t ask for it but I could see they need it. I’ve been kinder, cherished memories more than ever, and all of it in the memory of my mom.

Be Well,

Charlie Rowe