Shades of anticipatory grief
What if death sent a letter informing its arrival?
Recently, I came across this term- that made sense to what I was feeling for the past two weeks- Anticipatory grief. To paraphrase, anticipatory grief is when a person grieves for someone who isn’t dead. The person laments impending sadness.
This term, anticipatory grief, attacked the thing that pumped perfectly with a hammer that pained too much to forget.
Soon, I saw shades of this –unnamed- grief that summoned my heart in an extremely excruciating manner. I saw the oranges, the blues, the greys, the blacks and finally, the sepias.
At first, my life turned upside down at the thought of it. The world beside me burned, and I watched it mercilessly. Orange flames rose from the heart of the old, and I became numb. The smoke watered my eyes, but I knew the flames would live short. I knew it wouldn’t consume the old, and I’d be free from the eye-shattering smoke of those flames.
Then it turned blue- not the royal shades, but the dull ones that make you feel rusty, old and pale. The blues continued with me for the initial weeks; the blues tormented me for the initial weeks. But I was prepared. I always liked the colour blue.
Just as the sky turns grey at the signal of rains, the shade of anticipatory grief turned, yet again, a loathy shade of grey. The grey was dull, sad, wanted to turn blue- but couldn’t; full of self-loathe and smelt of death. The grey lasted for about a week, slowly blooming, slowly igniting hope in me and slowly turning blue.
Life plays cruel jokes on you sometimes. The shade never turned blue again. In fact, after nearly turning blue, it went blank. The shade of blue became the shade of nothingness. Nill.
To grieve for someone before they pass through the realm of the living is a relentless ache in the heart. While someone’s passing might shock you, put you through hell back and forth- the anticipation, the constant fear of ‘that’ phone call creates an incurable void.
Anticipation is scary. You start being selfish- you think of the days you wouldn’t like to get ‘that’ phone call or the seasons. Anticipatory grief turns you into that shade of black that you’d hate to see on someone else.
While anticipatory grief is often misconstrued as either anxiety or passive-aggressiveness- it is, in fact, something that pulls you down.
The final shade of anticipatory grief is the colour sepia. It comes with a bag full of memories and a carton full of old gifts. This final shade reminds you of the things that happened right before this grief. The final shade makes you feel things strongly- it mentally plays those memories like a 90s film.
The final shade of anticipatory grief is, in fact, the most dangerous shade of anticipatory grief.
