I started this blog eight years ago to update friends and family when my brother was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. Little did we know in those early days of his diagnosis, filled with hope, that it would be our last Christmas together. I am Matt Knell’s sister and this is the first time I have written on here since circa 2010. My post today will be a little different to the posts usually shared on this blog - I wanted to share what I’ve learned about grief and writing it here feels a little like coming full circle.
Today is seven years to the day that Matt's life was taken by cancer. And so, this time of year is littered with psychological triggers at Christmas. My subconscious connects the uniqueness of Christmas events that don’t happen year-round to the trauma of my brother’s death in our childhood home just three days before Christmas. Christmas is the epitome of bittersweet.
Putting up the Christmas tree brings flashbacks of decorating the tree while Matt lay on the sofa, too tired to join in. Putting up the Christmas tree is fun until it reminds me very morbidly that somebody else I love is going to die one day. Christmas shopping is fun until I come across fluffy socks in TK Maxx and remember throwing together an overnight bag for Matt the first night he spent in hospital - giving him his Christmas gift slipper socks early so his feet would stay warm in hospital. And with all of those little reminders, I remember that I’m going to feel all of this all over again one day. And again. And again. C.S. Lewis said, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” I get it.
Putting up the Christmas tree brings flashbacks of decorating the tree while Matt lay on the sofa, too tired to join in. Putting up the Christmas tree is fun until it reminds me very morbidly that somebody else I love is going to die one day. Christmas shopping is fun until I come across fluffy socks in TK Maxx and remember throwing together an overnight bag for Matt the first night he spent in hospital - giving him his Christmas gift slipper socks early so his feet would stay warm in hospital. And with all of those little reminders, I remember that I’m going to feel all of this all over again one day. And again. And again. C.S. Lewis said, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” I get it.
Grief is different for all of us. Every member of my family experiences the loss of Matt differently. Everyone who knew Matt will experience something unique. We deny grief in different ways, we accept it in different ways, we wrestle with it in different ways. The only thing we all have in common in grief is that we have and will encounter it multiple times in our lives. There’s no escaping it.
So what do we do now?
There is a way around it. There is a way we never have to feel grief again. Did you know?
It looks something like this: withdrawing from all our relationships, closing our hearts off, being alone. We can avoid grief by exchanging what Martin Buber calls an ‘I-thou’ relationship for an ‘I-it’ relationship, but it will cost us everything worth living for. It will cost us joy, connection, meaning, life, compassion, understanding, and beauty.
The alternative is to open our hands out and hold the inevitability of grief delicately woven into the marrow of life’s joys. We can choose to live wholly, more intentionally, more vulnerably, more beautifully, more bravely by fully engaging in what we have - knowing its worth and what it could cost us. We can look at grief and say, ‘Yes, I’ll take you because of what you come with’. Grief is not the enemy. Grief is the natural result of having loved and having been loved, the pain of losing the greatest privilege. And that privilege is also our purpose - to love and be loved.
I haven’t always known this though and am still only in the early stages of seeing it. After Matt died, in many ways I became avoidant and detached. Part of this, I know now, was my brain trying to look out for me because as a traumatised seventeen year old I didn’t know how to look out for myself. Fight or flight - it’s the way we are wired. Aren’t our brains amazing? Albeit not a healthy long term strategy, flight came in handy when I wasn’t at a place to deal with the messiness of the raw trauma.
But it wasn’t long before, as an introverted fresher in a university city, I found myself with a lot of alone time. A lot of time to distract myself while grief sat patiently in the corner, saying “We can begin when you’re ready”. And slowly I started to wake up to what was going on inside. I knew I had a forked road ahead. Path A was continuing to hide under my duvet, finding excuses not to go to my lectures, flunking out of my dream degree, moving back home, missing out on my potential because something bad had happened to me. Path B was choosing to get up, asking for help, investing in my psychological and emotional wellbeing, investing in my spiritual wellbeing, walking through the pain, weeding out the unhealthy relationships, putting effort into the healthy ones, identifying the unhelpful habits, showing up and looking grief in the eye.
Grief is a misunderstood teacher. She teaches me that it's up to me to stand on my feet when I want to hide. She gives me the opportunity to embrace post-traumatic growth and teaches me to make the best of what I have while I have it. Grief teaches me to be more present. She teaches me to open my arms wider, to forgive quicker, to love harder, to take bigger risks, to find the beauty in the mundane. Grief is teaching me to sit with her and cry, and experience the sincere weight of what it is to share my heart with people I may lose. And little by little, I’m learning to be less afraid of her. Grief is the reminder that what we had was real and that it was a part of us. If it doesn’t hurt when you lose it, was it ever worth having? If it doesn’t leave a void, did we ever really have it?
In many ways, I’m worlds apart from that sixteen year-old girl who started a blog eight years ago. In the same way Matt would be a very different person now to the nineteen year old he was when he was diagnosed. I’m older, a little wiser, much stronger. But I still get afraid. I still have bad days and hug my husband a little tighter when I remember tomorrow is no guarantee. I still catch myself when I read or hear about another person fallen victim to cancer. I still cry over my brother, I still feel bitter sometimes. I still engage in the sadness as people we lose become memories. Our lives are vapour - one minute here, gone the next. But that doesn’t make them meaningless. And we can choose to go onwards, knowing a little more about what it means to be compassionate and stand next to each other during life's unpreventable hardships. Perhaps that's really what it's all about - showing up as we are, embracing the broken, building community, awareness, and love.
I also know that this isn’t the end. This time on earth we have, it’s just a split second. When I get overwhelmed by fear and grief, this video is my ‘reset button’. I believe with every fibre of my being that there is a bigger plan. I believe in a good God who does not cause us pain, but gives us the most profound and amazing gifts of life and love which hurt when they leave because they were so wonderful to have. And although I have experienced deep sadness, my life can still be joyful. If you’re feeling lost in life, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by grief, if you’re unsure of the path life is taking you on, this video is for you too (bear with the first minute). And just as a bonus, I think Matt would have gone nuts for this kind of stuff.
