Walking Through Our Grief

By Linda Ross Swanson

When we first met, my best friend Mary Ellen had survived tonsil cancer, only to have it return five years later as lymphoma. Before her illness, she enjoyed rock climbing, bicycling, and hiking. A few months before her death, we trotted around a nearby high school track. Most of her time was spent sitting in the bleachers watching me make the loop. I wanted a miracle for Melly. I didn’t want to say good-bye. But, on July 7, 1996, she died in my arms, taking a part of me with her.

After her death, I felt urged to activity. I thought I’d go crazy if I didn’t move, not an abnormal thought when someone we love dies. Physical activity helped me accept the reality of my loss — the first step in any grief work. One night, walking around my neighborhood, someone hollered, “How many times you going to go around?” And I answered, “As many times takes to clear my head!”

On my daily walks, I chanted “peace” or “love” to keep my focus off of Melly’s death. It worked briefly, followed by an endless parade of thoughts. Sometimes I talked to my friend. “Melly, I need energy! Give me some help!” Soon, I’d sense a little shove from behind. Asking for her help energized me and seemingly brought her closer to me, keeping her memory fresh. I feared losing her completely.

Giving ourselves respite by going out-of-doors is healing — the sun warms our faces, and fresh air fills our lungs and brains with pain-relieving endorphins. In times of silence, our buried emotions surface, providing healing opportunities. Good mental health requires movement through our emotional pain.

Allowing myself more alone time, with silence to do my grieving, was both physically and psychologically drawing me through it. I walked alone, because this was Melly-time, a time for weeping without explanations. Tears are a healthy, normal reaction to having lost someone we loved.

Walking evolved into jogging, intensifying my workouts. I moved my jaunts to the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park, plodding from the Arboretum parking lot to the Pittock Mansion, then continuing to Macleay Park. I jogged my grief, or my grief jogged me, among the trees and streams, the plant life and forest animals. The daily dying in the forest simultaneously revealed new and emerging life and provided a glimpse of hope.

It took a number of months to accept Melly’s death as final. Like everyone else, if I wanted to move on, I had to create a “new normal,” for the old had died with her. As I adjusted to the changes in my environment, I felt a sweet reassurance from the universe that I would be provided with other friends to love, and that it was okay to continue loving and remembering Melly. She never needed to leave my heart; ours was a forever relationship.

When enduring the loss of a loved one, we come to realize that the changes we must make are more than physical: They are mental, behavioral, and spiritual. When we lose someone we love, it affects every area of our lives. We cannot control how we will react after a significant loss. No matter how we do it, our reactions are real responses to real losses, not something we can turn off and on at will. Grieving is the price we pay for loving, and working through it takes whatever time it takes. Everyone’s process is unique and not something to be judged. There are no rules. Moving toward and working through our grief is the only means we have to recover hope, peace, and comfort in our lives.

None of us can escape our own death or that of another. There are, however, many pathways to recover from the death of a loved one. I found walking my grief to be a means of gentle catharsis and soothing calm, something I couldn’t find any other way. It was my pathway to a new normal and to finding a new life beyond the pain of loss.

Linda Ross Swanson, MA, CT, is a nationally certified grief and loss counselor and educator in Portland, OR. For more information, she can be reached at 503-267-7550 or visit www.wisdomwill.com.