Why Can’t I Grieve

Loss, Bereavement, and Grief, all mean the same thing. They are the synonym for each other. They all give the same feelings, sadness, pain, and regret.

All of us experience grief when we lose someone or something we love.

Tears — Image by Annelise Lords

LOVE is the root word. Love makes all things possible. Its absence creates problems many of us never get over.

Isn’t it amazing how love and hatred can determine if and how we grieve?

Can we grieve, feel loss, and go through periods of bereavement if there is no love?

All of us handle the three of them differently.

The question I asked, is, ‘In The Absence of Love, can You Grieve?”

Where there is no love, do you really feel the loss?

When there is no love, how do you handle grief?

Without love, do you go through a period of bereavement?

All three are a part of life and no human, not even animals can escape the dragnet. We all must go through the cycle of life.

In my world, there wasn’t a lot of love. We didn’t get any from my mother. My father was kinder. I don’t think they got any from their parents either. So we grew up not knowing what love is.

Love and kindness show the world that we are human. Hatred and cruelty say the opposite.

Does it really?

My sister died a few months ago and I am still waiting for life to show me that I am human. I haven’t felt the loss yet. We had issues of dishonesty, thoughtlessness, and how she and her children took me and my husband for a fool. They used, cheated, and lied to us. I denied my children and myself many things to make their lives better. I sacrificed myself, only to find out that they were using me.

Looking back, I find reasons to add grief to my feelings. I look for ways to feel some sort of loss. I can’t go through bereavement if I don’t think I lost something.

So, sometimes, it’s a mental thing.

Are grief, loss, and bereavement mental too?

Throwing it around in my brain, sending my memory back to when we were kids. There wasn’t enough love for me to feel as if I had lost something.

No love was there. We didn’t have a bond.

Growing up poor, we worried about eating and living more than anything else. We were too busy raising ourselves and fighting life to create any bond. I searched, I swear. I do remember an occasion when she cooked and my mother told her not to give me and one of my sisters any dinner. She starved us and we had to sleep on cardboard on the floor in an old unoccupied room where we lived.

I demand from life, a reason why I can’t feel loss or grief. Humans who make our lives through hell when they are alive, put us through a process called pre-grieving.

The pain and cruelty stop when they are no longer alive and cannot harm us anymore. Life, fate, or destiny find ways to save us sometimes.

I realized that I was pre-grieving already. The cruelty done to me hurt me. I was already grieving. I already felt the loss and betrayal of a sister. I couldn’t go through a period of bereavement because, in my brain, I didn’t lose anything.

Does that make me less than human?

Why can’t I grieve for her?

Someone said I should forgive her?

I did. I know I did. But still, when I check my heart, I feel nothing.

“Because there is no love there,” my conscience notified.

‘Without love, that makes me inhumane,’ I curse myself going back, recalling that she is like her mother. How we were raised and how we live is vital to how we love. How family and friends think of us. How they will feel when we are gone.

Even in death, our decisions are our lives. Again, I learned that in the absence of love, grieving is impossible.

Love is a powerful emotion, and so is hatred. How we live, will determine how we are missed and who will grieve for us, and why. Annelise Lords

I am human. I know I am. I do have love in my heart. But life showed me that, we can forgive, and still can’t grieve for the cruelty done to us by humanity. But we can learn and ensure to live a better life, that will allow positive memories that possess healing powers after we cease to exist. Annelise Lords

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

Live a good life! You can forgive, and still be unable to grieve.

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it.