The Gut Punch of Publicly Losing my Friend
I’d like to talk about grief.
The first time I experienced deep deep grief was life changing.
*The registration for our beloved grief support group ‘Lighthouse Circle ends tonight’
You can sign up anytime until we start at 9am Friday morning JST (that will be Thursday night in USA) we also have a JST Tuesday night session that started beautifully this week*
It was September 16th 2001 and I had just awoken from a night in Tokyo, where I and my newly minted friends had been out to celebrate my 30th birthday. I scoured the Guardian for the list of names of the British who had died in the attacks - hoping with all my heart I would soon hear from him and not see his name there.
His name was there.
It was like I had been hit like a canon ball and flung across my kitchen.
No breath.
Grief punch.
Full body shock.
I had experienced loss before; three grandparents; one when I was 6 months in my Mother’s belly and her Father died. A unique grief.
Then my other grandad - got healthy 76 year old, taken slowly by a stroke. It was upsetting and at his Funeral, a family member spat into my face ‘cut the drama’ as I wept and I then understood how cruel the culture can be around grief.
Then my beloved grandma, whom I’d seen every week since I was born to when I left home. But she was 86, infirm, and since a fall in hospital around ten years earlier, she had been in a care home, well looked after, visited regularly by her daughters, son in law and grandson. If felt right. I was sad but it felt right.
But this. This public, horrific loss of a piece of my heart, my 31 year darling friend. This was something else. All-consuming.
Ever since I arrived home from the Italian restaurant on Tuesday 11th and watched the fall of the towers, I had been awaiting a reply to the email I had sent to confirm he was Ok. We had spoken in August.
I cried every morning, taught all day with my game face on, then cried the moment I stepped off the train at my home station. I took the long way home to avoid people. Responses to grief can be clumsy. ‘We’re you close?’ ‘When was the last time you spoke?’ ‘Did you speak often?’ Like folk are assessing how much empathy or sympathy to show you… they genuinely mean well I think. Unless they don’t.
I got an email from his email address the following week - OOF! Another canon ball in the shape of a ghost. It was his fiancé frantically searching and scrambling for any hint or evidence of him. That would come much later for her.
One evening I bumped into a friends‘s husband. He clocked me. I was uncontrolled, wild, fat tears, shaking shoulders and gasps of breath. He said he was sorry and left me, at my request, to walk home alone.
Moments after arriving home his wife appeared and held me so completely, gently and freely in words. Having suffered a recent devastating loss herself it’s like she had a sixth sense.
After a hug she just listened, believed, gave words of love and reflection, shared in my grief and let me be there. Lost in this new land with her. She let it be devastating and for me to be devastated without reservation. I am forever grateful.
And so began my healing journey.
Of 20 years.
At Lighthouse Circle we will never:
- give advice
- minimize grief
- compare grief
- validate grief ‘yes - it’s important enough!’
- invalidate grief ‘were you close?’
Last year was the 20 year passing of the September 11th attack and a wave of grief hit me from a place in my body I was unfamiliar with. It was odd and it was from somewhere in my abdomen or root and moved up and out.
I was in the Lighthouse Circle so I knew - “this is grief, here is is.” I think it showed up about September 10th. I was curious. I spent the next month furiously filling all my in-between-times searching his name, reading every article, watching video after video of accounts of escape (2 people escaped), or loss. Feeling everything.
Some people, notably a self styled guru named Russell, label this disaster p0rn or grief p0rn. How very generous of this spiritual pop star. How evolved. Spiritual.
Luckily I was in the non-judgmental space of the Lighthouse, where this frantic processing behaviour was not only not judged, or considered a gratuitous indulgence, but accepted and witnessed. Gentle nods of the head and understanding filled our emotional field. (PS I’m all for gratuitous indulgence - go wild, get pleasure).
One month later I was done.
Just like that I watched the last video. Read the last story. Made my final search. My algorithm accordingly adjusted and this year, the day moved by, with social media memories the only reminder of this historic grief. (Of course a huge collective grief happened around the same time with the passing of Queen Elizabeth 2nd of England, that is unfolding as we watch, but that’s another conversation; also session 5 of Lighthouse).
I still think about him from time to time but something shifted in that 20 year grief.
No grief is too old for us to hold.
Very fresh grief that is just too raw and tender to go near yet.
40 year old grief that has been influencing in the background.
Pets, parental grief, anticipatory grief, parents’ grief that was past to you, ancestral grief, we have space for all of it.
We hold it. We believe you.
Your stories are our stories are shared stories.
Every story is held in the circle and in each other.
There is practical, psychological, spiritual, and scientific input.
Everybody has stories.
Registration is open through call start at 9am JST Friday.