Permission to Grieve

I’m not sure if I should be writing this, but I keep coming back to a thought.  I’m torn on whether it is okay, or even appropriate, to grieve for someone to whom I used to love with my whole heart.  Most of my writing revolves around dissonance, hence the title of this venture being “Dissonance Personified.”  I often find myself in these gray areas navigating the static.  Here I am, once again, with compass in hand and trouble in heart, trying to figure out the best way forward.

I got a flurry of text messages on New Year’s Eve from family members asking if I was okay.  The texts all included a link to a recent obituary I had yet to see.  When I clicked on the link, I saw a pair of familiar blue eyes staring back at me.  I knew life hadn’t been kind to her in the years since we were close, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. It still knocked the wind out of me all the same.  The thing is, I had cut ties with this person many years prior, but I’d never truly stopped wondering what had become of her.  I guess such is the beauty of first loves.  They always hold some residence in your heart.  Despite years of distance and discord, those early memories formed pathways that stayed trodden in my heart long after the pain of separation.

After I received the third phone call, my wife knew something was up.  I sat her down and told her what was going on, and who exactly had passed away.  My wife then asked if I was okay.  Why was everyone asking me that?  This wasn’t about me, and I was so confused as to even if I could grieve for this person.  This wasn’t because I didn’t at one time love her, but would my grieving somehow dishonor my wife?  Would honoring the memory of a love lost somehow cheapen my current relationship?  The answer of course is no.  That dissonance still plagued me, and I shoved my emotions down.  Mostly, it just turned to anger and busyness as I began moving from room-to-room finicking with this or that to keep my hands moving.  It’s hard to think when you’re busy.  Something about idle hands, a devil, and a playground.

My wife is a saint.  That needs to be stated up front.  She understands that despite my best effort at a gruff outer shell, that I love very deeply, even when I say otherwise.  She also knows my heart is usually much more open to forgiveness than I let on.  For years I’d built up a wall regarding that seven-year relationship after it ended.  At its conclusion it felt like a sort of death.  It became another casualty of the Iraq war for me.  My homecoming brought about the end of an engagement, friendship, and commitment to “forever” with that person.  Then I just kept living my life with that tragedy in the rearview trying to move forward without looking back. 

Some seventeen years later, I find myself with emotions flooding back, and a lump in my throat.  It wasn’t so much for what could have been with us, that ship had long sailed.  It was more of a mourning for the person that the world had lost.  Despite any issues we’d had relationally, this person was good to her core.  We went to our high school prom together, she went to every show for every band I was in during high school and college, she wrote me every day while I was in Army basic training, sent care packages to Iraq, and tried to love me when I lost my way after returning home from war.  The seven years I spent with her and her family were some of the most formative years of my young adult life.  I will be forever thankful for those things, and regardless of how everything turned out, they are still valid and true.

I explained this to my wife, of course, and said that I just didn’t know exactly how to process what I’m feeling.  I said that I felt a deep sorrow and sympathy for the family most of all.  The irony is that had I not loved her family so much, our relationship may have ended much earlier than it did; perhaps ending without the trauma it caused us both at the time.  They are great people to whom I still care for a great deal.  This doesn’t diminish their daughter’s memory, and despite her flaws, she was a kind and beautiful soul.  I’ve never met anyone who loved animals the way she had.  She’s why I passed college algebra, and may or may not have done my homework more than once.  She even convinced me to go vegetarian (and later vegan) for over a year, a conviction she held dear and remained true to long after I quit.  I’m thankful for the time I got to spend with her, both good and bad, because it made me the man I am today.

So, is it appropriate to mourn the death of a former love?  The jury is still out, but I think there’s enough room in my heart to both honor my wife, and grieve the passing of someone to whom I shared a large portion of my early life with.  I am thankful for how understanding and supportive my wife is, even when I am just a mess of mixed emotions.  I still keep pushing down the emotions, and trying to compartmentalize things like a good “soldier” does for whatever reason.  The levy almost broke as an inopportune Saves the Day song spun on my record player a few days ago.  “At Your Funeral” made my voice crack, and that lump in my throat choked the words as I tried to sing.  It was off key and emotional.  I had to push it down and skip that song.  Every time I hear it lately my eyes well until I’m forced to skip that track.  Maybe I’m not ready to face this.  Time will tell. 

Grief wears many hats and, in many ways, I have already grieved for this person and the memory of who we were way back when.  Sadness grips me all the same with the finality of her passing.  I am giving myself permission to grieve.  She deserves that.  Currently it looks like anxiety attacks and avoidance, but people grieve in different ways and I have to accept it as it comes.  I pray that in death she finds the love and acceptance she so desperately felt she needed and truly deserved.  I hope her family doesn’t blame themselves, I hope none of us do actually.  There is no blame, only tragedy.  To quote the Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa “we must embrace the pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”  Brianna, I pray you’ve finally found peace.

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Brianna Leigh Smith October 27, 1983 ~ December 27, 2023 (age 40)

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