Grief is Not a Thing with Feathers

This week I've been writing an essay. The final essay of my degree. Quite fittingly, it's about mourning. While I was doing the initial planning I actually realised that perhaps a different question would work better, but I decided to stick with mourning. For various reasons, I felt it might be good for me to write 6000 words about grief right now. Among other things, soon I will probably need to grieve a little for the end of my time at university. One of the main texts I'm using is Grief is a Thing with Feathers. If I had recommended it to you before I had reread it, I would have said I enjoyed this book. Having reread it now, that is not enough. It's very short, only a hundred pages and written a bit like poetry, so barely even a full 100 pages. But when I reread it in a single day last week, it exhausted me. It is so painfully honest about all of the emotions that come under the umbrella of 'grief'. The guilt, the annoyance, the indifference, the laughter that feels stuck somehow. I truly love this book. But I do disagree with the statement in the title. In my opinion, grief is not a thing with feathers. The book pulls you through grief, and it is heavy. It is not made up of feathers, it is heavy and exhausting and sickening. Bruised but inexplicably, regrettably, still breathing, every time you think you might be ready to stand up, grief stamps again, until your whole body is marked and aching. If grief was feathers you could brush it away, stand up, dance. Grief is inescapable. When you walk away you take it with you.

My experience with grief has been, mostly, preemptive. I have grieved things that never were, things that never came to be, a person I was never granted the privilege of meeting.
I'm an intensely happy person, able to get to giddy laughter within a few sentences of talking to someone. I worry that someone reading this blog would think otherwise. I am only able to be that happy person, because I'm so aware of all my negative feelings. Turning to a room packed with smiles from everyone I love, I would notice the tightening of my stomach. At the peak of happiness, I would feel intense sadness that I might never be that happy again. I like to think that I am able to be so deliriously happy in the company of those I love, and often in the company of strangers, because I allow myself time to grieve anything I might need to.
For reasons which are inherently positive, last week I called the restaurant I have worked at for nearly 4 years, and told them I wouldn't be coming back. For most people, this might seem like something to celebrate, and it is, but I do want to talk a bit about the reasons I'm so sad to leave this job. Around 4 years ago, I would quit the only thing I'd ever wanted to do with my life, leave London, return home and start looking for a job. I wanted any job that would allow me to work lots of hours, so that I would be able to save for whatever I wanted to do next, whenever I decided what that would be. Trawling the internet, an advert appeared, for waiting staff at a restaurant that didn't exist yet. I applied, and a few weeks later, having the choice of 3 different jobs, I chose that one, on the basis that we would be allowed to keep our own tips. This was, at a glance, in no way, shape or form my 'dream job'. But for the whole four years I worked there, it was always exactly what I needed when I needed it. I know I was meant to end up there. Everything came together with timing and people. I don't think anyone can understand how much of a big deal it was to me, in that it was the first thing I had done that wasn't dance, and I was really good at it. I had expected to be awful at everything that wasn't dance, and I had expected to hate everything else too. I loved it. A lot of that might be because I was good at it, but I think most of it was down to the people I worked with. I met people who inspired me massively with their work ethic, I cried laughing so many times, I was surprised by the love shown towards me in the toughest times of my life. They built that restaurant at exactly the time I needed it and filled it with the people I needed. This is, without a doubt, the perfect time for me to leave.
Like I said, I've been thinking a lot about grief lately. I'm taking refuge in the things that allow me to be sad, but that I have revisited often enough to be comfortable. For me that's Peter Pan, the same sad songs I've listened to since I was 13, and the episode of Friends where Pheobe gives up the triplets. Grief, like heartache, is something that weighs heavily on your person, until it doesn't anymore. About 5 years ago I had my heart broken, and for the next 2 years I didn't really feel anything for anyone at all. Eventually I longed for the pain of heartache. It's a blessing to feel so intensely. It's a blessing to have loved anything enough that you need to grieve for it.

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