Grief comes in many colours

When we are grieving, the usual hues are expected — sadness, longing, despair and even the odd speckling of anger. We can conceptually place these colours on the grief feelings wheel and be comfortably uncomfortable with them. They make sense. They are what we expect grief to feel like and, generally, they are socially accepted.

But grief comes in so many other colours too.

Not long after Tommy died, my daughter was hit with a particularly rotten gastro bug. Like most of our dealings with gastro, it struck in the middle of the night. Our house went from calm slumber to sudden crisis. As I was manically scrubbing questionable bodily fluids from the carpet at 3am, I couldn’t help but notice a small feeling of relief. Part of me was thankful that I didn’t also have a screaming newborn in the mix.

Of course, the guilt wasn’t far behind.

How could I feel relief that he wasn’t there, when I was so utterly distraught about his death?

Looking back, I can recognise that grief is not as simple as sadness. It can be experienced as any colour on the feeling wheel — including those we might consider to be positive feelings.

There are certainly times when sadness, longing and despair take up all the room. But there are other times when numbness, resentment, bitterness, confusion, disbelief, agony, rage, terror and desperation push to the forefront. Over time, our grief may even show shades of love, pride and warmth in the connection we continue to feel with our babies.

And there may be moments when relief is as valid an emotion as any other.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we wish our babies had never existed, or that we are happy with the outcome that unfolded. We would still give anything to be propelled into a parallel universe where our babies are safely in our arms. The love and longing remain.

And yet, these two realities can exist at the same time.

We can acknowledge whatever feelings arise without judging them, while still wishing desperately that things were different. We can feel relieved in one moment and completely bereft in the next. Even years later, we can find ourselves in breathless tears one minute, and filling with love the next.

Grief is a wild ride.

The dial on our grief feelings wheel can be bumped in any direction, sometimes without warning. Our job isn’t to decide which feelings are acceptable and which aren’t. It is to notice where we are, make space for whatever is there, and allow the feeling to be.

Because the wheel will inevitably turn again.

And as it does, we continue to journey through this life, carrying our babies with us — forever held in our hearts.

Tommy’s Mum x