Reflections on the privilege of grieving

Like many of us, school was not a very good experience for me. It always felt like pulling up an act; and an exhausting one at that. There was one silver lining in it though, the days we had singing class. A frail man, our music teacher, used to walk in with an old, mildly out-of-tune guitar. One of those days, he came into our class and taught us a song which has strangely lingered with me. The lyrics went – “For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains.” While it sounded incredibly poetic to my ten-year-old ears, it honestly bothered me at the time. All I could think of was- wouldn’t they rather have the actual thing remain, than the beauty of it after it’s destroyed or gone? Even today, while I do see why people lean on this quote for comfort, it somehow fails to work on me.

Whenever I’ve lost something or someone dear to me, I’m so engulfed in grief that somehow “the memory” falls short of sustaining me. More often than not, my grief is accompanied by an urge to resist reality. “Wait. What just happened? No, it can’t be.” Denial is almost a reflex protecting us from the shock of the truth. That our old normal does not exist anymore. There is only a before, and an after.

As I read more on trauma work, and have held space for client’s bringing in their grief in session over the past 18 months of this pandemic, a profound realization emerged – to grieve is a privilege.

When a traumatic event occurs, our body kicks into a response that ensures survival. We jump into action of resolving the loss, making arrangements, dealing with the shock and stabilizing everything that has been destabilised. To sit with the grief and process the emotion requires a feeling of safety – a luxury often denied to those whose survival is continually threatened. The time and space to hold one's own grief without the impending anxiety of “what's next” is often afforded only when one is relatively privileged.