Soylent Grief Monster
Grief is a monster. I think about grief a lot with my job. I worry that I'm not helping my families grieve, that I'm not providing the right space for them, that I'm not giving them all the tools to work with, that I'm not doing enough. Mainly that I'm not doing enough. This leads me to thinking about my own grief, which in turn leads me to thinking about the time I mailed three huge cases (a hundred bottles) of Soylent to my funeral home.
Let me take a step back and explain a few things...
We have SHOCK (this is when the event is currently occurring, when we're in the midst of "the shit").
We have TRAUMA (this can be a physiological and psychological response and can occur throughout, we can have reoccurring traumas and added secondary traumas, etc.).
We have GRIEF (this is a very broad term that encompasses all mental and physical anguish over a loss).
We have MOURNING (this is the outward expression of grief).
(Think of it like a big circle called Grief. You have Shock and Trauma floating around inside. Sometimes there may be multiple Traumas bumping into everything in there. Then think of Mourning as the exit sign. It isn't the door to say that you're done grieving, it is just showing you the way to the next step.)
As a Funeral Director it is my job to take someone (or many someones) who have just experienced a loss and walk them through the trauma, into the grief, and then into the mourning phase (the funeral). Pre-pandemic I could have told you that I felt that I was pretty darn good at this. But post-pandemic... it's hard to say. Sometimes, lately, I really feel at a loss.
We regularly hold grief support meetings at our funeral home and it has been a huge success in the past. It has created lasting friendships, saved more than a few from taking their own life, and in a few instances it has created "more than friendships." We haven't been able to hold these support groups for the past year. This year, I had the honor of taking over the esteemed Bob Ross's legacy and continuing the grief support groups. I had already been researching and studying grief and its many forms for years, but I wasn't prepared for what I was in for. At the first meeting, Bob gives the history, introduces me and Kristin (the licensed grief counselor) and we dive in. After the break Kristin and Bob pull me aside and say, "Heather, we really think you should tell your story and share with the group." Now all of the people who came to this group happen to be families that I've served in the past year. I am their Funeral Director. Telling them my personal story of grief felt very personal. But I did. I talked about losing four family members in three months. I talked about losing my childhood be st friend when I was young, Abby. And then I talked about losing my best friend Tina, the most devastating of all. This is where Soylent comes in and this is the story I told.
Tina St. Claire (whew! that's hard to write) or TFail as she was often known in our circles, was diagnosed at age 31 with a very large glioblastoma (a gigantic tumor) in her brain on Christmas Eve of 2015. She died three months later on March 9th of 2016. It was absolutely life-shattering for me.
A couple days after Tina died I was on Facebook and I got a notification that Tina St. Claire had "liked" this product called Soylent. About this time we had discovered that she had "go bags" in her closet for all kinds of scenarios. In hindsight this makes sense, she was very big into conspiracy theories. She had a bag for a zombie apocalypse, she had one for earthquakes, and on and on. She was well prepared. So when I got this notification that she would like this new drink called Soylent my first response was, "Well no she doesn't, she's dead. Fuck you Facebook." But then I clicked on the link and yes, oh yes, she would have definitely liked Soylent. Soylent is NOT Soylent Green, however the name is not lost on the creators. The creators of this drink researched the basic needs of the human body down to essential minerals and nutrients and created a substance that one could technically survive off of solely without the need for food. Absolutely brilliant, right up Tina's lane. So what does one do who is grieving but doesn't have time to grieve because she's working 24/7 and helping others grieve and also really good at compartmentalizing her emotions (*psst, I'm talking about me*).
I did it. I started the 30-day Soylent Challenge. I thought, I'm going to go 30 days and only drink Soylent and this will somehow be a bond between me and Tina and this is how I am going to honor her... I had three huge cases with the word "SOYLENT" written and nothing else delivered to my funeral home. In hindsight this wasn't the best idea and led to more than a few questions by families and my boss.
I made it about 17 days. After 17 days I was like, what am I doing? This is ridiculous. But I also had some kind of clarity to make the realization that this was grief. This was me grieving. This is what grief LOOKS LIKE on me. Weird right?
Remember when I said that grief is a monster? Yeah? Well, monsters come in all shapes and sizes. I feel that as someone who has the honor of helping people wrestle this monster it is important to know the monster personally. My grief monster looks like going on weird crazy diets that subconsciously allow me to feel like I'm in control of something (my body) because nothing else is controllable and I was spinning. Your grief monster might look like something different.
You may not have a SoylentGrief Monster, but I bet you know what I'm talking about. Think about it, sometimes it may be something that we think is completely unrelated to the person or the death or anything.
What does your Grief Monster look like?
