There are not too many of us who have not experienced some suffering. Suffering is a part of our lives and is probably something we all need to do at some point. It’s not much fun at the time, yet I believe it is a vital emotion for our growth and development.
Suffering can be done in silence — a sort of martyrdom to be endured, but that’s no fun unless someone else understands that you are enduring it. Or you can simply let everyone around you know that you are suffering. Like my cat — she doesn’t suffer in silence — ever. She lets us know very loudly that her humans are making her suffer by not keeping her food bowl filled at all times.
Seriously though, we all suffer to some extent and in many different ways. There is the anxious excitement we all felt when we were waiting for Santa Claus to bring us presents at Christmas. As children, we suffered many anxious moments; I remember losing my new set of coloured pencils and agonised over how I could replace them without having to tell Mum. I just knew she would make me suffer for being so careless. As a child, any sort of suffering is terrible, and as an adult sometimes it doesn’t seem much better.
We’ve all lost loved ones in many varied ways and we talk of someone dying from a heart attack. We say at least he didn’t suffer as if suffering is a really bad thing.
I believe that suffering is something that makes us stronger. Suffering shapes us into the people that we are today. I know that some of the traumas I’ve suffered over my lifetime have made me who I am today. No, I didn’t enjoy those times, but through them, I have learned empathy, compassion, love, and many other emotions that help me get through each day.
Losing Kelly gave me choices — I could continue to grieve and feel sorry for myself, or I could choose to accept her death and still grieve, yet be a part of the world again. Suffering isolates you, people will empathise with you for a time, and then they will grow tired of it and move on to other things. Suffering can become a form of self-pity which is unpleasant. And, as I don’t like unpleasant things I endeavour to not be that myself. Sure I still grieve, but I choose to be private in my grief, and despite it being twenty-three years since Kelly died there is still much to grieve about.
Once I accepted that grief would be a companion for the rest of my life, it became easier to live with. So now when my grief rises and threatens to overwhelm me, I accept it, acknowledge it, and then I can get on with living. And I’m not a martyr as everyone I know experiences ongoing grief for many years after the event. We all need space to grieve and then sometimes we wish to share it with others.
And that’s okay.