Growing Around The Grief - BLOG
I read something about grief the other day. There were two different images: a ball in a cup, and over time, the ball grew smaller. In the other image, the ball remained the same size, and the cup grew larger. It said that "grief doesn't shrink over time" (the shrinking ball in the first image) but rather, "you grow around the grief" (the cup growing larger as the ball remains the same). This depiction of grief really struck me. This grief will never shrink? I'm always going to feel this way?
It's a thought almost too unimaginable to bear.
Growing Around The Grief
But today I remembered the image I'd seen a few times on Reddit of a tree that had a bike sticking out of it. The story is apparently back in the 50s, a boy left his bike chained to this tree, and never went back for it. Time never separated the tree and the bike - the tree simply grew with the bike chained to it, and it eventually grew around the bike and absorbed it. Now the tree has become a spectacle, something remarkable, an image you can't forget. And it isn't the only tree out there like that - there's all sorts of images of trees that have grown around abandoned cars, motorbikes, and signs. Seemingly immovable, insurmountable objects placed in the tree's path against their will, that you'd think would squash out their lives and prevent them from growing. But the trees grew nonetheless. Time marched on and the trees continued their lives - supported by their strong, steady roots, the health of the forest around them, and the eternal, life-giving energy of the sun. Now these things are inseparable from them. They're a part of them, and even if it's painful, it makes them unique.
I feel like I resemble that tree now. I'm going to one day be this big old spruce with a bike sticking awkwardly out of me. There's no way to remove the bike without killing the tree. It's just like how I will probably never get over the pain of losing my brothers - I will take it with me to my dying breath. But I will grow. I will live with this grief. I will move on in my life and I won't be the same person I was. But my life doesn't end here. Maybe one day I will be able to see the pain and the grief as something beautiful to celebrate, that makes me unique. Because I have known and loved two people so dearly that I will ache throughout time without them. It's painful, but it's real, it's true, and I'm alive and that's beautiful. I am here to be a testament to their lives and the good things about them that we love and will always remember.
If the grief never shrinks and we grow around it, it's a beautiful thing.
Perhaps our grief and our growth are inseparable, and it's what makes us special.
Kimberley Kemmer - Edmonton, AB