Good Grief

 

 

“Good grief,” says Charlie Brown during times of frustration.

If only grief was as simple as when Lucy pulls the football away and Chuck is about to give it a boot.

 

Unfortunately you and I know grief as a feeling we get in response to a personal loss we have experienced.

 

I bring this up as we were discussing grief during a recent MS group meeting.

Our leader spoke about grief and how it related to a member who had just passed away from “complications of multiple sclerosis.”

The leader also talked about how grief can be an emotional response to our own MS.  That we grieve at our loss of physical function, cognitive ability and so on.

 

Our group’s discussion about grief dredged up several personal experiences I thought I would share—thinking maybe you have a similar memory.

 

My strongest outpouring of MS grief happened three years ago at my son’s high-school cross-country meet.  Watching him run the wet, soggy course was magical.

He was doing something I had loved–and it occurred to me that we would never do it together.  I cried…I’m talking “Brian’s Song,” “Other Side of the Mountain,” “Where the Red Fern Grows” balled!  Luckily, it was raining in a torrential downpour and my tears were hidden behind the rain.

I realize now they were not only tears of pride—but also tears of grief.  A finality of what was and what never will be.

 

 

(Go away Funny Meter!)

 

I also experience a tinge of grief every time I see the phrase “complications of multiple sclerosis” in a newspaper obituary.

Even though I did not know the person who passed—a little bit of me dies too as I grieve their loss.  I feel as though I can relate in some way.  Have an understanding that a healthy person will never know.

 

I wonder…does a cancer survivor, someone with diabetes or heart disease feels the same way when they read an obituary of a person with a similar illness?  Like one of their own has moved on.

 

This is a dark subject, I know.

And I apologize as this topic is WAY beyond the usual yammering one finds on this site.  But sometimes the reality of MS goes beyond a pumpkin-headed kid shouting “Good grief!”