If there was a melody for grief it would be heavy, it would hold notes of deep sadness, it would hum a sound that sends you into your own world, leaving you with shivers, leaving you in a still gaze, bringing you to repeat the music over and over again in an endless circle of intense emotion. It would be a melody you could only listen to alone, it would be something you’d lay quietly sobbing in the safety of your home too. The melody of grief would be a song so powerful, that the power takes over your whole body. A song that is so raw that every note is felt in every corner within you. If the deep crushing ache within our hearts could ever be played maybe others would understand, maybe others would feel our own melody.
I often wish that there was a way to describe the grief I feel, I can write, I can share, I can talk, but inside myself, and within my own heart, is the only place that truly knows my grief. As for many of you reading this who have experienced their own life-altering losses, only you know how you feel. We wish, we so wish, to be able to explain our struggles, we want others to understand how It feels for us right now, but I don’t think there is any way we can do this. Yes, we can share, and yes, we can express and cry to those we choose to do so with, but only we as individuals know how we feel, and that is at times, an incredibly lonely place to be.
I feel as time moves on, as we pass that year of firsts, that it is seen by many that we should perhaps be doing better, and although in some aspect we are, we are moving forward, adjusting to a new way of living, in other ways we are not doing so well. We are stuck in some ways, stuck in our own melody, a painful endless song, a song that I have come to realise will be played over and over, for the rest of my life.
Grief is such a complex journey, one of many ups and downs. Your music plays whilst you try to navigate your way through this maze of twisted emotions, a maze of muddled turns, and often suffocating dead ends. Somedays you feel stuck in the maze, with the same tune playing over and over again, and on other days you find your way, figuring out the puzzle and reaching a place of safety with your tune much softer, much easier to listen to.
In our music there aren’t only notes of sadness, the melody also holds lighter notes, chimes twinkling when you drift off into a precious memory, moving tones of a piano when you remember moments of those last embraces, the last kiss, the last smile. Like grief itself, we still travel back to those memories, those incredibly precious memories filled with happiness and joy. In grief there is light and there is dark, and in our own melody, it will always be played by the music of our hearts. After all, our hearts are where those we love will stay for now.
I hear your melody, as you hear mine, go gently x
As my blog name says- there is no textbook!“
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October 22, 2020
Beautifully expressed Phoebe, I hear the melody of my mum playing through my heart and wonder how I can ever move forward differently, without her playing the tune….