Navigating Grief

Grief. We feel it when we suffer a loss. Death is the first thing that comes to mind for most upon hearing the word “grief.” If someone we love dies, if and when the shock wears off, and the numbness subsides, we begin the real work of grief. It is a long, empty, confusing, isolating experience. There is no quick fix—and never will you long for a quick fix, more than within the depths of grief.

 

We also grieve other losses: an idea we believed, a faith we had in someone or something, a hope, a possibility, a goal. Sometimes grief sneaks up on us. We can grieve for our own lost innocence. Sometimes we grieve for a lie we once believed to be a truth. If a lie was a better story, or promoted a more positive image of someone or something, we grieve for the loss of our own ignorance.

 

For men and women in combat, the goal of returning home is often so pivotal to their survival, that the reality of returning home struggles to live up to the fantasy. Not because the people or places have changed, but because the soldier has changed. He or she cannot unsee, unhear, untouch or unknow what is now known. Only when the soldier returns to where he or she came from, will they realize how profoundly the experience has changed them. They will try to be the way people expect them to be, and the way they wish they could be, which is the way they were before they experienced the horrors of combat firsthand. Sometimes just being around the same people, as they unwittingly reveal through an expression on their face, or word they say, an expectation that can no longer be fulfilled, is enough to break the heart of the soldier, who longs for an innocence lost.

 

Innocence lost can never be regained. When we come upon this realization, it is shocking. Heartbreaking. Strange. Difficult to navigate.