Good grief; Charlie Brown had it going on!

If you are anything like me, you know that life has a way of throwing fast curve balls or just straight up bee-liners right at us without warning.  It wouldn’t be so bad if you knew it was coming, if you had some idea of where to catch it or when to duck those balls that are hurled at you often at the speed of light for what seems like no reason at all! Oh how I wish I had warning when things were going to hit and rock my somewhat stable world, but even if I did know, I don’t duck very well as the scars on my face can attest to! Soooo…..what would be the point of a warning? Ha!

my dad when he was a baby

When my dad died, I had no warning.  I don’t think it would have mattered if I had.  At the time, I felt like I was hit over and over by a hard baseball I couldn’t see but knew hurt like hell had just risen up, grabbed my heart and started dragging me down to the depths from where hell came from!   Until that moment, I never really understood how one could die of a broken heart.  Oh, I had broken hearts from boyfriends gone wrong, but nothing like the broken heart at the loss of my dad.  Hearts break for many things, love being the most important one.  Did you know you can die from a broken heart; just slowly fade away until you no longer exist.  You hear stories out in the space of Internet and the world of how the 90 year old woman/man dies and then her/his spouse dies not long after for what doctors say are nothing but a broken heart.  Wow eh!

Yep, your heart is a powerful and integral part of you, so much so that one can actually feel the physical breaking when faced with grief/sorrow/sadness.    Sure, we all know it’s the mind that is telling us that our heart is breaking even when it is not, but the mind is mysterious thing and even though it logically knows it isn’t true (your heart tearing and breaking apart) it still tells us it is.  How totally bizarre! Why would it purposely allow for such a hurt; why would it make grieving so sorrowful in the first moments, months and even years of losing someone/something we love?

Let us for a moment take a look at Charlie Brown.  He was always facing grief with the Peanut gallery but how did he make it through them; for example the being fooled over and over by Lucy and her holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick assuring him she would hold it only to pull it right out from under him? At this point you may say he was a cartoon character and question what he could possibly teach us about grief, especially good grief.  Well, despite that he was always being tricked and that his life wasn’t as he wanted, he still managed to get back up.  He allowed himself to grieve, allowed his heart to feel the pain, and then he moved on within his world.  He used his grief to change himself and often found motivation from his grief to let Lucy hold the football again, approach the little girl he had a crush on, and participate in community functions.  Charlie Brown had it going on!  He knew that good grief was necessary to life; that it hurt but also that change doesn’t happen out of utter happiness!   

Grief, no matter from what, has a purpose.  Sure, it doesn’t feel like it when you are going through it and you want nothing but for it to go away – all that sadness, hurt, anger and all the multitude of emotions that inevitably accompany loss. Yet, and yes yet, grief eventually eases and we get that much closer to being who we are meant to be.  Loss grows us.  Good grief is that water that drops every now and then to help us grow.   My dad was the greatest good grief I have experienced so far.  His dying taught me how to live, I mean really live, that hearts do break but also heal and that despite the football being pulled out from under me, I can still get back up and attempt to kick it. It isn’t how far you kick it, but the movement of doing so, that really matters.  Good grief Charlie Brown, you have it going on!

I wish you happiness within your sorrow/grief.  And hugs....lots of hugs.

Carrianne