This post will discuss griefy days and grief storms. There might be some official name for them created by some super-scientist somewhere, but for simplicity we named them ourselves. A “griefy day” is a day when we really miss Art. Nothing necessarily triggers a griefy day, they just happen. You just wake up one day and your heart hurts for your loved one. Sometimes it’s only for the morning, sometimes it’s mainly just that night, but most of the time it’s an all-day thing. We will have tips on how to survive these later in this post, but mostly we have learned we just have to accept griefy days and practice extra self-care on those days.

A grief storm is not quite as subtle as a griefy day. Most grief storms have some sort of trigger. They occur when you are fine all day, and then something happens and suddenly you have a grief storm with raging sadness and tears. These grief storms usually happen when you’ve been holding in some serious grief, and then something triggers a massive grief explosion, and everything comes pouring out at once. Here are two examples of when each of us were experiencing a grief storm.

SHELL’S GRIEF STORM:

Our most recent experience with a grief storm was on Christmas Eve of 2019. We still have a hard time figuring out what to do on Christmas mornings because Christmas morning was always a big deal with my husband. We recently decided to change our Christmas morning of opening gifts to Christmas Eve. This was our first year trying out our new idea.

That morning I was scrolling through some photos, and I found our family jumping pictures from our pre-cancer life in January 2013 (those pictures are discussed more at the end of our post Looking Back with Grief During a Pandemic). Naturally, I sent them to Jay’s phone because I was so excited I found them. Then this is when the grief storm began. Jay casually and innocently asked, “Mom, do we still have Dad’s Disney Cruise Line Jacket that he was wearing in the jumping picture?” Behold, this triggered a grief storm!

I thought I knew where the jacket was, so I went to go get the jacket and give it to Jay. Keep in mind that six months prior, I finally cleaned out my husband’s closet and got rid of four carloads of clothes (yes, it took me 4 and a half years to clean out his stuff). I remember being very angry that he died while I cleaned out his stuff. To my surprise, when I went to the closet to grab the jacket, it was NOT there! I panicked and thought for sure I gave it away.

My mind immediately went to the bad place and I was certain I got rid of the jacket six months ago.  Furthermore, when I looked where I thought I put the Cruise Line jacket, all I found was the jacket we bought for him while he had cancer! All I could think was why in the world would I keep that cancer jacket over the pre-cancer Disney Cruise Line jacket? This triggered many tears, panic, and so much guilt. I was devastated because when I cleaned out his things, I made sure I asked my daughter if there was anything she wanted to keep before I drove to Salvation Army. The thought of someone else wearing the Disney jacket was breaking my heart.

I ran through the house crying and looking for the jacket. This right here is a prime example of a grief storm.  I did finally find the jacket packed away in a box, and I rushed to my daughter with ugly snot tears while holding the jacket.  After that whole ordeal, I just hugged my daughter. I am grateful that Jay understands it really was not about the jacket. It was pent up tears from the previous four weeks of Thanksgiving, her birthday, Art’s death date and Christmas. Every year we have six weeks of continuous activities, holidays and death dates to get through. This year I held back all my grief, but I didn’t realize I was holding it all in until the one moment when the grief storm came and my body said, “No more!” It was time to release it all.  We hugged it out, cried, and then went on to continue Christmas Eve as planned for that day.

JAY’S GRIEF STORM:

           One of the grief storms I remember most is from spring of 2019. I duel enrolled at a community college, meaning I took my normal high school classes and then added on two college classes. I knew I wanted to do this, but I didn’t really know how or what I was doing. I did really well in the college environment, and my over-achiever-ness and enthusiasm convinced me I could handle two college classes, a full workload of honors high school classes, and switching to the advanced musical theatre class on weekends (which is a lot more work than the standard classes). Spoiler – I could not handle it. I was barely holding on, and a complete stress bubble in all departments. Apparently, everyone could tell that I was crashing except for me. I kept trying to convince myself that I was fine. I could do it all, right? So what if I didn’t sleep? I could do this.      

  As much as I loved everything I was doing (yes, I’m that nerd that actually enjoys learning in school and loves college!) I started to learn this wasn’t going to work out well if I didn’t stop. By the time I figured this out, it was already midterms at college. Nevertheless, I took both midterms for my college classes. When I finished writing the in-class essay for my English 1A Honors college class, I felt great about it! I knew I had just written an A+ paper, and I wanted to celebrate! I may have been starting to crash and burn, but dang it, I just wrote an awesome college essay in two hours! I was so proud of myself, and all I thought was I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my dad and get the biggest hug from him—

And there it was. I did all this and managed to succeed, and all I wanted was to tell my dad and hear him say he was proud, but he couldn’t. I couldn’t go home and hug my dad because he’s dead. This is when I felt the grief start to creep up. I just needed to hold it together until I could find my mom and once we got to the car, I’d allow myself to cry.

Yeah, I guess no one got the memo of my plan to cry in private in the car. My mom was hanging out with our professor friend in her office and texted me to meet her up there. Incidentally, this professor was the one teaching my other college class! “Okay,” I thought. “I can just hold it together until we get home.” I got up to the office and tried so hard to push down the grief.

The first thing they did was ask how the midterm went. Turns out, I couldn’t even tell them it went well without my voice cracking. The embarrassment of that was the last straw, and I finally lost it. I was a sobbing mess, and I couldn’t stop. I remember I just kept saying, “I just want to hug my dad”, and my mom explained to our professor friend how these good things are bitter-sweet since he died. I was crying because of the midterm, yes, but it was more than that. Remember how I said everyone saw I was starting to crash from trying to do too many things at once. This was me finally crashing and burning.

I had wanted to hug my dad since the beginning of the semester. I’d wanted to ask for his advice, if I was making a mistake trying to do so many things at once. As I felt myself starting to crack under the pressure, all I had wanted to do was confide in my dad. We used to have a routine where my mom would go to bed, and then my dad and I would stay up and watch the DIY channel and talk. All I wanted was to do that again and tell him everything that was happening. Throughout the semester, every time I felt this way, I shoved the feeling deep down and started working on one of my many projects. When I finished that midterm, the grief from all the preceding weeks shot up and out of me like a geyser in Yellowstone Park. Thus, I experienced a massive, ugly snot sobbing grief storm right there in my professor’s office.

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Grief storms can be as big as searching the whole house for a jacket, or it can be triggered by something smaller. Art was a housepainter, and for the first few years when we were out in the world and saw painters, we would cry or want to cry. That counts as a grief storm too. Each grief storm is different for the individual and their situation. Despite how each grief storm is different, we have culminated some tips for surviving your personal grief storms and griefy days.

JAY AND SHELL’S TIPS:

• If you want to cry on your griefy day or as you’re experiencing a grief storm, don’t fight it! Let everything out, even if that means a lot of tears.
• Take the time you need to cry if you want to cry. Then, when you’re ready, talk to someone about it. Either talk to someone
  in person, make a phone call, or even text! This is to help you process everything you’re feeling.
• Accept that you are feeling griefy or having a grief storm. Denying it will not help and might only make things worse. Pushing
  down feelings all day on a griefy day might even lead to a grief storm later on!
• Know that you are not the only one who wakes up sad or starts sobbing over something that non-grieving people may not
  understand. You are not alone, and it’s not just you.
• Always, always, be kind to yourself!

Remember even if you feel alone, you are not alone on your grief journey. There are others grieving in the world too. Grief causes crazy things to happen sometimes, like searching the house for a dead man’s jacket or having a mental breakdown in your professor’s office. As you navigate your own grief journey, crazy things are bound to happen that will make for funny stories later on. Always remember, no matter
what, be kind to yourself!

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell