3 Metaphors About Grief and My Rating Of Them
if you are going to talk like a weirdo I will rate you, sorry!
Grief is unfortunately disgusting in every possible way. Maybe there will be a day when I see the good side of it, but today is not that day. It is so difficult to describe to the uninitiated. How am I supposed to encapsulate that some days I feel fine, normal, even a bit relieved that I’m done with a horrible life milestone that everyone has to deal with? And that other days I see a Star Trek ad that reminds me of Mom or a historical novel that reminds me of Dad and I am consumed with unrelenting thoughts of my own death and the relentless pointlessness of human existence? And that other days I feel replete with joy and contentment that I have one wild and precious life on this earth and full of motivation to live it well, and in a way I’m proud of?
You could call it a rollercoaster, I suppose. It is. It’s unpredictability of emotion in the extreme. With my dad, I remember the period of unpredictability being acute for some time, and then eventually it dwindled to trigger periods like his death anniversary and his birthday.
With my mom, I think I’ve just lost the ability to remember when that period of acute unpredictability ended. I know I’m just clouded by these early stages, but it’s a terrible metacognitive state to be in. I’ve been here before! I know it doesn’t last forever! But I’m also in it and the grief feels unending and horrible and deeper than the fucking Marianas Trench and if I go down there I’m never coming out! But it didn’t last forever last time. But what if it does this time?
This chaos is so difficult to encapsulate to outsiders to this experience. Therapists the world over have tried out many different metaphors to improve our understanding of this experience. I like metaphors and I like stupid internet memes and trends, so today I will be power ranking 3 metaphors about grief. For those of you who also enjoy this internet trend, I’m sorry I only picked 3 metaphors to rank instead of a full tier list. Maybe that will be a future post.
F tier: The Unwanted Visitor
After my dad died I got super into performing poetry live. I wrote a poem once that I am so grateful has been lost to time, because the only thing I remember from it is this cringey metaphor.
You can compare grief to someone to whom you gave a key to your house. They love to use that key constantly. This unwanted visitor shows up at the most inopportune times and will not text you in advance. They just show up, and you’re in for a hangout whether you want it or not.
I liked this one when I was a teenager, but now I just find it fucking stupid. Why wouldn’t I just change my locks in this scenario? Why can’t I toss the visitor bodily from the room? Where are the implications of the lack of control and chaos? Does the visitor ever stop coming over? I mean, it’s true that entertaining guests with no forewarning is my actual worst nightmare, but I can do so much to prevent the situation. I don’t have that much control over my experience of grief.
F-tier metaphor. 0/10, would not tell to a fellow grieving person. Too many logical plot holes.
B tier: Climbing a mountain
My TikTok (ok it’s not TikTok, it’s YouTube shorts) has been full of hospice nurses for a good while lately. My favorite is a young woman who talks a lot about individual patients and her view of the afterlife. I am comforted by her stories of people dying peacefully and having visions of their loved ones. I resonate with her simple view of the afterlife as a place where we can be with our loved ones who have gone before us, no more, no less.
She posted a TikTok where she shared a metaphor for grief. She describes it as like climbing a mountain with a heavy backpack on. It’s tough to carry a heavy backpack up a mountain, and at the beginning of your ascent, you feel weak and overwhelmed all the time. But as you continue to climb, you get stronger and your load begins to feel lighter. You never get to take the heavy backpack off. But it will eventually start to feel lighter.
I don’t mind this metaphor. I am an enjoyer of Peleton classes and group workouts, and I actually like the cheesy sayings that coaches are always spouting. Things like “It doesn’t get easier, you just get stronger” actually resonate with me, because I like the shift in focus from chance to my internal locus of control. This metaphor feels like it’s more focused on what I can control, and I like that. It also feels intuitively true— I remember the time after my dad died very much feeling like carrying a heavy backpack everywhere. I sure as shit feel that way about my mom now.
But like. Mountains don’t go on forever. You eventually summit. It’s been 14 years and I haven’t stopped missing my dad. I’m not special either. Most people who’ve lost someone they love will tell you that you don’t get over it. So maybe it’s just carrying a heavy backpack up and down the Rockies forever.
B-tier metaphor, 6/10. Lacking but still good.
S tier: The Ball in a Box
I am in a long-term Dungeons and Dragons campaign with some friends I met through a podcast community. After my mom died, one of them messaged me and told me that if I wanted, they would be available via DM for stupid jokes, random messages and thoughts, and dark humor. I took them up on it, and they offered me excellent advice such as “do not sucker punch anyone at your mom’s funeral, even if they deserve it. Violence is frowned upon in most societies.” Fucking funny and true.
They also gave me my favorite metaphor about grief. They described it a ball inside a fused metal box. Inside the box is a button, and when the button gets pushed, you feel it. “It” might be pain, sadness, overwhelm, whatever. This box is also being held in a perpetual motion machine, and the ball is always moving around in the box. The ball is liable to push the button at any time, causing you to feel things you’d rather not feel. Over time, your box will get bigger, and the button will get pushed less often. But you cannot control the motion of the ball or when the button will get pushed.
This is a great metaphor. I love the respect for and acceptance of the inherent uncontrollability of grief. I accept the hope that the box will get bigger over time. I hate that fucking moving ball, but I know I can’t stop it from bouncing around.
S-tier metaphor. 10/10 would send to a grieving friend.
My siblings and I, when we ask each other how we are, always have to add a little spice to it because we know what the answer is. It’s not a “how are you”, it’s a “how have you been sleeping”, or a “how rrrrrrr uuuuuu” to indicate the silliness of the question. I’m not good. I haven’t been for a long time. But I am trying to live my life. Somehow, bizarrely, despite everything, I have a really good life and really fucking good people. Sometimes these dialectics are the truest things. I have a pair of tattoos on my forearms to remind me that life is full of truths that seem like they oppose each other, but do not.
I know the conventional wisdom is to write from your scars and not your wounds. But maybe that advice is bullshit and maybe it wouldn’t kill us to look at the chaos of the walking wounded and not be afraid of it, because they will eventually heal. Time, as my mom used to say, has a distressing habit of marching on.
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It is interesting, I have always felt it as kind of a box as well. But more like a glass box which I am inside. Most of the time the box is so clean that you forget that you're in a box, so you almost feel like there's no dividing barrier between you and everybody else, but whenever you actually try to reach out and participate in stuff, it reminds you that it's always there