As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
Unknown, Reddit
This piece about grief was taken from a Reddit page which you can access by clicking here.
Get Grief Support with The Loss Foundation
If you’re finding it hard to cope with loss, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to go through it on your own.
At The Loss Foundation, we offer grief support for people who have lost loved ones to cancer. We provide a range of free services and resources, including:
- Bereavement support groups (in person and online)
- Grief events and workshops
- One-to-one support sessions
- Weekend retreats
Our team is made up of trained professionals who understand how grief affects us emotionally, physically, and socially. Whether your loss was recent or many years ago, you’re welcome to join our community.
🧠 Understand the ‘Stages’ of Grief
The idea of “stages” is one of the most widely recognised ways people make sense of grief – but it’s often misunderstood.
Our Stages of Grief page explains where the model came from, what the stages really mean, and how they can help (without implying grief follows a neat, linear path).
Explore the page to learn:
📘 What the Five Stages really are (and aren’t)
🧭 Why grief doesn’t follow a straight line
🌊 How emotions can come in waves
🧩 How different grief models may help you