Grieving Dads Project

I recently sat down and generated a list of 30 words that could be used to describe grief.  Obviously this list relates to my experience with grief, so I am interested to see if anyone else can relate with some of these words.  I plan on doing a series of postings that will not only define these words, but expand on why I thought they would be good descriptors.

 The third word I chose is:

Debilitating:  Defined as “to impair the strength of”

This word speaks to me as a descriptor of grief because I felt like I lost all of my strength.  There were days I couldn’t get out of bed and when I did I would hurry into the shower, get ready and then hurry back to my wife’s bathroom door and stand there and cry while she was getting ready for work.  I had no strength, it was gone and I was looking to my wife to help me.  It was like we switched roles.  She became my strength and I would ask her all of the time “am I going to survive this?”  If I made it to work, I would walk in and sit at my desk and cry all morning.  I wouldn’t speak to anyone unless they came to me, and we all know people love to talk to someone that is crying or dealing with grief.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of time by myself while I was at work.  At the end of the day I would hurry home and change out of my work clothes, grab a book about grief and try to understand what I was dealing with.  I was trying to answer the one question that was on my mind “is this normal?”  I had been stripped of everything.  Most of this behavior occurred after the death of my second child.  Because I didn’t deal with the first loss, my body was forcing me to process both losses at the same time.  I was the strength for my wife after our first loss, but she had now become mine.  Prior to both of my losses, I was a “get out of my way, take on the world” kind of guy.  Nobody or nothing could stop me.  Apparently I was wrong, because not only did this stop me, it brought me to my hands and knees, literally.  Most people around me witnessed this strong personality crumble into a beaten down scared man.

Although grief is debilitating, it is also survivable.  I sit here and write this almost 5 years later and I can tell you, it is survivable, but I know there are times when you don’t think you will.  My strength is back in full force and I use it to reach out to others that have lost theirs.  I do my best to offer my strength to the many people that are currently in the same place I was.  There were many people that had strength that reached out to me and pulled me up; I feel it is now my turn to offer my hand to others on this journey.

Anyone else agree that this word is a great descriptor of grief?