Grief. It is a powerful, gnarly mess, so complicated, yet so basic of an expression. Even the word feels final. It is the emotional reaction to finality…to a life full of finite circumstances. What strikes me most about grief is the ending of dreams. Do these dreams just disappear, crumbling into separate thoughts, dropping off the edge of a giant cliff into brokenness?
Grieving for a broken dream is recognizing what you hoped to happen won’t, and it always effects you. Even if you shared, just for a moment, in a dream for someone else, when that dream is broken, you grieve. We put such effort into tying together lofty thoughts and creating fanciful details. Releasing our dreams on their maiden voyage, they sail just ahead of us so that we must pursue; always somewhat out of reach, yet the hope of experiencing our dreams keeps us chasing them.
We all know what happens when we catch up to our dreams; fantasy collides with reality. We spin off in a furry of wild bliss and our elation sends out giant waves of joy and excitement for all to savor.
So, what about the dreams that never collide with reality, these ghostly fantasies turned hauntings to what could have been…what should have been? In the daytime it seems so clear why the “could haves” and “should bes” can’t. It’s safe to question the waters when you can see what’s ahead, when your support system is awake- attending to your mourning- and your course of action involves small steps. But in the night is when we bump into these abandon, deteriorated dreams floating in dead waters. This is when our support crew are all asleep, launching their own dreams, and the course of action feels like the deepest pit of coldness that needs to be explored.
Exploring that deep pit of grief…sounds like the loneliest of pilgrimages. The whole spectrum of emotion grips us. Those endowed with even the most abundance of bravery still tend to lean towards avoidance. Is this voluntary self torture helpful? Is it necessary? Will it eventually happen without conscious effort?
Sometimes we allow, perhaps desperately force, a ship full of sadness away, sinking it to the bottom of our emotional ocean. The out of sightness turns into instant relief, allowing the griever to move on short-term. Sooner or later though, or maybe never but the fear still exists, this shipwreck of brokenness will resurface, demanding to be dealt with in the most inconvenient of ways. Nasty mess that is.
The opportunity to explore grief and return to tell the story lies in a change of thought. What if specific elements of broken dreams can be salvaged?…picked apart?…reconstituted and focused into creating newness of hope? That certainly feels better.
