Excerpt From: “Surviving – Finding Your Way from Grief to Healing”
“You Just Do It!”
I have an aunt named Cleo who I love dearly. She had a husband and two sons. She lost her husband and then she lost both her sons. I remember going to each of the funerals and wondering how she could survive such loss. It just seemed too overwhelming for me to comprehend. After all her losses, she remained upbeat and positive. It was amazing to me the courage and resilience that she possessed in the face of such tragedy.
After my loss, I called her and asked, “Cleo, how did you do this? How did you survive?” She answered, “You just do it.”
I remember at the time thinking that was not the profound answer I was seeking to my question. I thought she was going to tell me some secret solution she had discovered to heal the pain of her loss. A solution I would be able to understand and utilize to comfort me in my pain and sorrow.
As time went on, I discovered that her reply was exactly the right one. There is no secret solution to healing grief. It’s a different process for everyone. “You just do it.” Each of us takes a different road on our journey through grief. It depends on the relationship we had with the person we lost. It also is based on prior losses that we may have suffered. I can only imagine how difficult her grief journey was, but I can’t know how she felt personally while traveling through it.
If someone who is grieving asks me now how to get over a loss, my answer would be like that given to me by my Aunt Cleo. “You just do it.” You have no other choice but to move forward. You somehow find a way through the heaviness of grief to a place of healing and peace. It’s a long journey that never really ends, but the light becomes more illuminated along the way.