Nice Metaphor or Process? Are You on a Journey Since the Death of Your Grandchild?

I finally found it ... or the source that may have prompted the online article I mentioned in my first anniversary post.  The blurb stated that 'grief is not a journey'.  It took a couple of weeks and some serious searching to find the piece published by CBS News.  While hunting it down, I expected to find a personal account and was a bit disturbed to discover a news story promoting a book with 'the truth' about grief.

As I read through the article, there were many claims that made me stop and think ''not true - at least for me'.  Bear in mind that I am a bereaved grandparent and I have a degree and background in journalism.  I'm fairly confident that I know the difference between a fact - something that is proven to be true -  and an emotion.  I understand that emotions cannot be facts, but rather are how we feel.  As defined by Merriam-Webster, grief is distress and distress is extreme sorrow, anxiety or pain.  Because our experience of grief is personal and unique to each one of us, it seems illogical to me that blanket truths can stem from emotions.

Let's see what you think.  I am interested in your thoughts.

The headline of the story is "Grief: 7 Myths That Make It Worse."  A description of the book states that "Ruth Davis Konigsberg, the author of The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss, reveals the truth about seven common fallacies."  Konigsberg is a senior editor at TIME.  She lives in Pelham NY, with her husband and two children.

The above information tells me that the author has not lost her spouse or a child, much less a grandchild.  In fact, in a Q&A linked to the story she is asked:
Q: Why did you write this book?  Were you recently bereaved?
A: While I have lost people dear to me in my own life, this book did not grow out of personal experience, but rather a journalistic desire to make sense of a model for loss that doesn't seem to be serving us particularly well.

Getting back to my curiosity about why grief is not a journey, this is what Konigsberg writes:
"Myth: Grief is a Journey
Grief a "journey?"  A "process?"  Nice metaphors, maybe, but a recent study that tracked the daily emotions of the bereaved found so many ups and downs that the idea of a journey seems misguided.  At this point, the best one can say about grief is that it comes and goes - and then, eventually, simply goes away."

Wow!  This two phrase, two sentence paragraph is loaded! 

While I do agree that calling our grief experience 'a journey' is a metaphor, it also makes what we are going through relatable.   We all understand what it is to take a journey.  My friend, Merriam-Webster,  defines 'journey' as: "an act of traveling from one place to another: "she went on a long journey"  verb: travel somewhere: "they journeyed south"."  I don't know about you, but I want to continue moving forward along my grief path.  I need to journey on.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to be stuck in the extremes of either the overwhelming grief I felt when Kitty died four years ago or that of not feeling any loss/sorrow/pain at all.

Yes, I agree there are ups and downs, but to say that having good days and bad days makes our grief journey "seem misguided" makes me chuckle.  'Seeming', once again, is neither factual nor truthful, it simply appears to be.  We can have setbacks on all of our journeys ... we may forget our wallet at home and have to turn around to fetch it ... perhaps groceries are in the trunk and we remember that we need to pick up a prescription at Walgreen's before we can get our perishables to the refrigerator, possibly we're driving to the movies when the babysitter calls because one of the kids fell and needs stitches or ... the car ran out of gas and the nearest station we passed was a block back.  Misguided?  I think not ... rather setbacks.

Finally, and most shocking for me to read was the statement "the best one can say about grief is that it comes and goes - and then, eventually, simply goes away." 

50 months have passed since Kitty Rose died and 49 months since I lost my mother. Many more years have passed after the loss of my grandma, my dad, a close friend, a neighbor.  Yet, the grief has not 'simply gone away'.  It has changed and become more bearable, but it's still there and I suspect always will be.  I continue to love and remember Kitty, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Phil and Timmy.  They all were a part of my life ... a part of me ... and that is not going to 'go away'.

Nah, it's no myth:  I am on a grief journey.  May my path be long and loving.

If you are interested in reading the CBS article about Konigsberg's book, it can be found at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/grief-7-myths-that-make-it-worse/