The Grief Fallout: The Ripple of Loss

The Grief Fallout
The Ripple of Loss

 

      The Pacific Theater of World War II was entering its fourth year.  The conflict was intense.  Battle was fought in the worst conditions and soldiers often fought for inches, not miles.  The cost for the United States was over 110,000 men.  Meanwhile Japan lost an estimated 2 million soldiers.  The conflict seemed destined to go on forever.  That is until August of 1945.  The United States dropped two nuclear bombs, one named Little Boy, the other named Fat Man.  The cities that felt the wrath of those two nuclear bombs were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In an instant, entire sections of those cities were vaporized. Buildings disappeared. Streets were reshaped. Lives were ended.  But the most haunting reality was not only what was destroyed in the immediate blast.  It was what came after.

      The explosion did not stop at the center point of impact.  A nuclear bomb wasn't designed just to create a small crater, it was meant to mushroom out, creating such widespread damage. It created a force so powerful that everything in its radius was permanently altered. Some structures that were not directly at ground zero still collapsed from the shockwave.  Everything within a .6 mile radius was destroyed, an estimated 80% of buildings were damaged at 1.2 miles away, at 2.2 miles away the fire stretched out burning skin off, and even as far as over nine miles away buildings were affected, windows shattered, and lives lost.  The horrible fires spread outward. Radiation lingered long after the skies cleared. Even those who survived the initial blast carried invisible effects that would shape the rest of their lives.

      And perhaps most sobering of all, the world around them never returned to what it was before.  Cities were rebuilt, yes. Life continued, yes. But the landscape was changed forever. There was a “before” and an “after,” and the line between them was unmistakable.

      Grief feels the same way.  It feels like a bomb goes off, leveling your life.  Loss hits at the center of a person’s life.  Sometimes the loss is expected, much like the loss of my late wife Tiffanie.  I knew it was coming due to her cancer diagnosis.  Sometimes it is unexpected, much like the passing of my wife Leslie's late husband Sam who passed away from a motorcycle accident.  Either way, everything in the epicenter feels the full force. Most people see the initial hit from the bomb of grief.  They see it in your eyes at a viewing, they can hear it in your voice as you share at a funeral.  They can read it in your social media posts, the look in your eyes after you cried in your car.  They are well aware of the epicenter of grief.  But what they don't see is the shockwaves of grief from ground zero.  They don't understand that grief doesn't just create a crater....it does not stay contained to one single moment in time or one place. It ripples out affecting other relationships, our finances, our identity, and our faith.  What happens at ground zero is so devastating, but the ripple effects outward are what really reshapes the entire landscape of the mourning person's life.

      Just like those cities, a person does not remain the same after the blast.  Can they rebuild a life?  Yes, they can and absolutely should.  That's healthy.  Can they heal?  Yes, and again, they absolutely should make every effort to heal.  That's one of the reasons why my ministry exists.  But they will always remember that there was a moment when everything changed.  So, how is grief similar to a bomb that goes off?

      First there is ground zero, the epicenter.  This is the point of detonation.  It's the sudden, jarring, physical loss of the person that you loved more then anything else in this world.  This levels you.  As I mentioned above, this is the external damage that the audience that surrounds you can see and notice.  This is the damage that the grieving person expects or anticipates.  This one feels like it's supposed to happen.

      But a bomb has a second zone called the overpressure zone.  This is the invisible shockwave that shattered structures away from the epicenter.  It collapses walls and breaks windows miles away from the initial fireball.  Grief also has a zone like that.  It's the structural collapse of not just the single moment in time, but the collapse of our daily life.  This is when grief is added on top of grief.  These are things that are unexpected and catch the grieving person off guard.  Its things like sudden financial loss, causing financial instability.  The average person losses 40% of their income when their spouse passes away and most of them were not financially prepared for it.  They also aren't prepared for the expenses like funerals, burial, gravestones, etc.  Tiff's funeral expenses were in the area of $25,000.  I would have been bankrupt if I didn't have life insurance to cover the expenses.  You are now left alone to manage a tighter budget with more bills.  Imagine making less money and having to pay more out.  This overpressure zone puts extra, unseen pressure on the mourning person.

      The third zone is called the thermal radiation zone.  This is the intense waves of heat that travels at the speed of light, causing fires, scorching things at a great distance.  This is when the grieving person feels that scorching emotion of personal identity loss.  I, along with other guest writers, have wrote extensively about identity loss after losing a spouse. When your person dies you are no longer part of a couple.  You become a widow or a widower.  You join a club you didn't sign up for and don't want to belong to.  Your social status instantly burns away.  It's such a painful reality to change your marriage status to widow/widower.  It's hard to remove that person from your emergency contact list.  It's hard losing something that was such a big part of you.

      The final zone is the fallout zone.  This the area where radioactive particles are carried by the wind, poisoning the environment and making people sick hundreds of miles away, potentially long after the blast is over.  This represents the loss of your support system.  So much of your identity was tied up in a person, and when that person is gone, so also will other friendships and relationships.  Friends that were near to you will slowly fade away.  Some of them will evaporate.  Sometimes people don't know what to say.  Grief isn't necessarily the most attractive emotion and other people feel awkward around it.  Others leave you because of the choices you make after loss.  Things like dating, jobs, etc.  This area of the blast zone is when you lose your future dreams.  It's the quiet, unseen mental struggles that you never could foresee on the horizon from ground zero.  It's the health struggles, the battles with motivation, the anxiety that plagues you.

      After reading this you might feel depressed or hopeless.  But that isn't the goal of this blog.  It's meant to be informative and to let you know, as the grieving person, that what you are feeling is totally normal and valid.  You are human, and to be human is to suffer and agonize.  It's also meant to inform people that aren't grieving.  My heart is to bring grief from the dark to the light.  To bring awareness of the inner struggle that a person goes through.  But it's deeper than just information...it's meant for transformation.  The damage is deep and will always have lingering effects.  It will scar a person.  But there is one who bears scars in His hands and feet that walks alongside with us through the grief.  He is a man of sorrows.  His name is Jesus.  He alone is our anchor of hope.  He sits with us in sackcloth and ashes.  He doesn't come in to provide immediate answers and to give us a sermon tied neatly with a bow.  Instead, He simply sits, holding us, comforting us, sometimes not saying a single word.  Grieving friend, lean into Jesus.  You're hurting.  He knows it.  Rest on His shoulder.