I entered the world of grief about two years ago when my husband of 34 years died by a very public suicide. I was awakened around 6 that Saturday morning — earlier than usual — to the sounds of my husband, David Buckel, getting dressed.
He said he wanted to go on a walk since it was such a beautiful morning. Instead, David went into our garage, where he had stored two plastic jugs of gasoline. He carted them into our local park — Prospect Park in Brooklyn — and, in a clearing away from any trees, laid a layer of compost on the ground. He then sat down and set himself on fire.
He texted all of us right before he died, and near his body he left a note (which he had also sent to the media) explaining that his self-immolation was an expression of his desperation over the state of climate change and the inability of the world to truly address it.
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When I got his text, I ran outside and into the park hoping I could find him and stop him. But the park was too big, and I had no idea where he was. None of us — not family, not friends — had any idea of the depth of my husband’s desperation. Not only was his suicide completely unexpected and traumatically violent, it was everywhere in the news. David was a prominent LGBT lawyer and a passionate environmental advocate.
His suicide plunged my family into a multilayered nightmare, overwhelming us with complex emotions of loss, confusion and anger, and surrounding us with an intense level of grief from which we have all struggled to emerge.
There are no right or wrong ways to go “through” such traumatic loss, but given how many are struggling with their own grief today — as a result of the pandemic, police violence or both — I wanted to share a few things I have learned along the way.
Don’t fight grief — surrender to it
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Grief does not let you go. Even when you think you are beginning to “move on,” it will suddenly catch you — intense waves of emotion take hold, rolling over you. They come unexpectedly, sometimes from a simple phrase uttered or memory brought forth. I was (and still am) taken aback by grief’s force, how sudden it comes on, and how I absolutely cannot control or suppress it. So I have learned to let it happen, to see it for what it is: a deep passing emotion where I touch and experience the depth of my loss and trauma. In essence, these grief moments are a reminder of the past and my loss, but I do not try to hold on to them, as I do not want them to be harbingers of the future.
Make grief part of your self-expression
Grief operates on its own timeline, which of course is different for everyone. For me, part of surrendering to grief meant allowing it to impact my choices for the future. What was I to do with the life I had left? Where might I find meaning, purpose and connection? How do I move forward? These questions began surfacing about 10 months after my husband’s suicide.
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To help me answer these questions, I formed a small team of four people I called my “journey coaches.” I chose people who I felt understood what I was going through. One was a friend who was deeply spiritual. Another was a work colleague who shared that she, too, had a similar experience 30 years ago and wanted to help. The other two were people I had recently met whose lives inspired me. Interestingly, only one of the coaches knew David and I as a couple.
At their suggestion, I began to practice meditation and reconnected to yoga. They encouraged me to spend time in nature and read all sorts of spiritually oriented books in which I had never before been interested, including “The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness” and “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.” With the help of my journey guides, I realized that I was letting my grief — which was always close at hand — lead me into new experiences and expressions of myself.
Grief can open us in unimaginable ways
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Twenty-six months have passed since David’s suicide — 26 months of being lost in grief, looking for ways out, turning to others for help and letting my grief open me up to new experiences. If someone had told me when my husband of 34 years died by suicide that life could blossom again in unimaginable ways, I would have thought they were mad — delusional. But that appears to be what is happening.
While grief’s trajectory is different for everyone, it is certainly not linear. I still have moments of deep sadness and sudden bouts of weeping, but I seem to then find my way to nature or other things I love that cause grief’s grip to loosen.
But here is what I have really learned: In grief are the seeds of hope. If we are open to this possibility and are able to plant and tend to these seeds — with the help and guidance of others — grief can help us see the world and our life in new and different ways. Life can be informed by grief but not controlled by it.
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So I now have new friends and loved ones in my life. I have begun to explore storytelling and making short movies, and have reconnected with writing by creating short pieces that express my changing emotional states. And through all of this, I find that I am keeping the memory of David alive while at the same time building my life anew. It all seems miraculous, and, yes, I wish my husband was here to share this with me, but he isn’t and that, too, I am beginning to be at peace with.
I see echoes of my own journey in all the grief that surrounds us during this moment in our collective lives. Even in the midst of unimaginable deaths, in a society that can be so brutal and racist, where we are divided and isolated, I see grains of hope. We not only feel our own suffering, we feel the suffering of others. We are in the depths of a deadly virus, yet we dare to join others out in the streets and imagine a new, more just and equitable world. Out of grief, there is hope.
Terry Kaelber is an Encore Public Voices Fellow and the director of the Institute for Empowered Aging at United Neighborhood Houses, a policy and social change organization representing 43 neighborhood settlement houses in New York.
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