Ripping Off the Band-Aid

Remember the roller coaster of emotions you felt as a kid when you fell off your bike or did something else to earn yourself a scrape wor- thy of a Band-Aid? I remember falling off my bike and skinning my knee more than once as a child.

At first, I felt the rush of pain as my knee hit the gravel, followed by the burn of peroxide once my mom began to patch me up with her first aid kit. Then, after we both blew on it, I felt the cool relief of the Neosporin and a Band-Aid to protect the wound so it could begin to heal.

In some ways, grief was like skinning my knee. After the initial pain and shock, I covered up the wound after the funeral with pleas- antries and a return to daily life in an attempt to heal. But just like wearing a Band-Aid, at some point, you need to rip that thing off and expose your wound to the air so it can finally scab over and fully heal. I had been dealing with my grief on a surface level up to that point, only allowing myself to know the depths of my heartache. It was finally time to excavate my sorrow and bring my pain to the light. I decided to join the Young Widows Grief Writing Workshop and braced myself for the necessary healing that only spilling my emotional guts could bring.

Our group’s first virtual meeting was on November 8, 2021. Five of us shell-shocked widows assembled on Zoom, and Joan quickly introduced herself and explained how each session would work. We would start with a short poem or writing excerpt and then be given 
about twenty minutes to write how we felt about the writing, followed by each person sharing what they had written with the group.

Before Joan gave us the writing prompt, she asked each of us to introduce ourselves. It was awkward enough to meet for the first time online. Add the fact that each of us had lost our spouse within the last year, and you could cut the anxiety with a knife. Thankfully Joan had run these groups for a while and did a wonderful job holding space, including silence, for us to begin to open up.

The introductions were as painful an ordeal as you would expect. All five of us widows were in our forties, and each of us had kids. In comparison, I felt lucky only having one child who was now a teen- ager versus the other women struggling to piece together their lives while also caring for one or more children under the age of twelve.

Even though my situation was slightly different, for the first time since Al died, I felt truly seen and understood. Some of the women had a spouse die from illness, having to experience the added pain of watching their husband suffer for months before passing away. A couple of the women were like me, having their significant other stolen in an instant.

After our round of introductions, it was time to complete the writing prompt. The assignment was deceivingly simple. Joan asked us to free write for twenty minutes, using the phrase “This grief is ”
followed by a description of our feelings. I grabbed my purple-and- gold embossed journal and proceeded to bare my soul. Oh boy, here goes nothing . . .

This grief is debilitating.
This grief is insidious. It seeps into every thought, every move, and every breath in my lungs.
This grief is selfish. It won’t allow me to take my mind off it and comes back with a vengeance at the slightest hint of joy.
This grief is sad. More sad than I’ve ever felt in my life, and

I’m scared to feel this way for the rest of my life, but I’m terrified to let it go.

This grief is lonely. I don’t know how to connect with others sometimes because they don’t understand the magnitude of my loss. This grief is haunting. It fills my nights with thoughts of him.
With longing and regrets and desires to wind back time to have our love all over again.
This grief is awful. It sucks the life out of you and makes you wish you were dead.

This grief is a part of me. Like a scar I’ll never get rid of or a wound that won’t fully heal.
This grief is surprising in its depth and complexity, and magnitude. It swallows anyone and anything in its path.
This grief is special because it’s shaped by the love I had for him.
That’s why I cling to the grief some days in remembrance of him.
This grief is necessary to honor my pain and my experience. I need this grief if I ever hope to deal with the terrible thing that happened to me and my son.

This grief is confusing. Some days I can talk about Al and laugh, and other times if I catch a glimpse of his picture out of the corner of my eye, I’m enveloped in tears.
This grief is strange that way. No rhyme or reason. No predict- able pattern or warning. It’s just raw, primal emotion of a love lost and a heart broken in two.
What comes of this grief? I hear it wanes over time, but at this stage, I’m skeptical if it’ll ever go away.

I looked up from my journal after reading my piece to the group and was instantly comforted by the all-knowing eyes of other women who also had been thrust into the rotten club of widowhood.
For the next twelve weeks, I showed up to our grief writing group faithfully. Some days I dreaded attending because I knew during the 
session the pain of my own loss and the loss of the other women in the group was inescapable. The fact that my grief was inescapable in these meetings was the unexpected gateway to my healing.