Sacred Grief

Exercise it and Have a Veggie Burger

Note to my wonderful readers: I don’t tell you often enough how profoundly grateful I am that you keep coming back. Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here. Now go tell your friends about The Deep End. Please and thank you.

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Lately I’ve felt like a big old failure as a widow. I’m worried about how wrinkles are making me look like someone’s pet Shar Pei. I’m even more anxious about losing my mind. And all the losses I’ve recently had make me wonder if I’m even decent at being a proper widow.

This week, while I visited a friend, she mentioned something called exercising grief. While I don’t go to even a regular gym anymore, I do try to stay fit as possible. But at the six-month mark of my widowhood, when it comes to grieving, I’m a flabby couch potato.

Whoever said we should never lose and always win must own a chain of boot camp gyms. You know, the kind where you show up at oh-dark-thirty, dressed in your camo workout ensemble to listen to some guy with buns of steel bark at you to keep going, you blob. Sometimes navigating all of life’s losses feels like an obstacle course. I’m the blob tripped up by the ropes.

Frankly, I don’t know how to grieve properly or even improperly. People keep telling me there’s no timeline or correct way to grieve a loss. But when my friend mentioned that there was a way to exercise grief, I was intrigued.

I don’t know about you, but I could use a few lessons in how to grieve. Most of us lose as often as we gain—unless it’s about actual poundage. Skin breaks down with each passing day and our brains kill off cells. And everybody insists you’re not grieving wrong. Yet some faces say, Geez do you have to make me feel bad again? Stop yakking about your grief already.

Some losses are naturally harder than others. Losing my mother was bad, but my husband’s passing took my breath away. I say good morning to Brad’s photo every day. But I know others who can’t bear to see or hear anything associated with their loved one. And yeah, losing out on a job feels awful, but discovering your precious son deceased can’t compare.

So how do you exercise grief anyway?

Obviously, moving your body releases endorphins, helps you stay active and gives opportunities to interact with others. Staying busy helps cut down on obsessive thoughts. Talk therapy or a grief group might help heal by letting you release pent-up emotions.

According to most, how well you exercise physically or how often isn’t important. Just move. If you need a hottie boot camp instructor with buns of steel to stay motivated, go for it. Stand in the back row and keep your head down so the guy doesn’t use you as an example of blobbi-ness.

But what about the rest of us? The parts we can’t see but that I believe are vital to health. Our souls and spirits or whatever you call them need to grieve too. Can we exercise them?

I think you can.

I’ve met so many widows and widowers who say their spiritual lives are much richer after loss. They’re actively seeking a deeper relationship with the God who is love. After all, when you’ve seen direct evidence that someone you cherish can leave this plane of existence, you start to realize that life on earth is pretty temporary. I don’t know what happens to my departed loved ones, but I know that love can hold them forever.

Exercising spiritual leanings by diving into the deep end of love helps me figure out my grief. I’ve come to a place where I’m not so sure about some doctrine, but I’m certain that not only does love exist, it never dies. I call my source of love Jesus, and if he doesn’t answer the first time, I add the last name for emphasis.

I do that silly stuff because laughter also exercises grief. The more you find humorous, the better you can find the courage to get through another day. Just a couple of weeks ago, my kids and families came over for a Father’s Day barbeque.

But first, we grieved by going out to a place where Brad loved to fish. We scattered his ashes over the waters. My daughter brought homemade lemon bars, his favorite. We honored him and remembered him and shared a lemon bars communion. It felt sacred and healing and I felt a rush of endorphins as I whispered, “Fly high, Daddio.”

It must be true that to heal, grief needs exercise. And also true that there must be fifty ways to work up a sweat. Whether you laugh or cry, stare at the wall or join spinning class, grief is probably the only kind of loss that always wins. Might as well love that too, even if you can only exercise a few reps of anything.

Love is standing by, to carry you and me and all who’ve lost their dearest, most precious person, place or thing. Let love carry you in your sorrow, in your grief, even when you do ridiculous things. Remembering this helps me feel less of a widow failure as the days march on.

Back at the house, as everyone stacked their hamburgers and hot dogs with condiments, I fixed my own burger: lettuce, tomato, mustard. I sat down and munched about half of my sandwich. Suddenly it felt like something was amiss. I lifted the bun up as my daughter watched. We both laughed until tears came. “Am I losing it?” I asked. I’d forgotten the all-beef patty. A veggie burger literally exercised my grief.