Jerri Kelley

I have been watching clips from The Madison, a series with the very talented Michelle Pfeiffer as her character grieves the death of her husband. It is so courageous and beautiful in its rawness.

Y’all know I write about grief a lot, less than I used to, but a lot of my writing has been about how to be present for others who are grieving. It is easy to throw verses or stupid platitudes like, “God needed another angel,” but it is hard to sit in the grief with someone.

As I watch Michelle Pfeiffer in these clips, I am captured by the honesty of the grief. It is hard to be honest about grief. It is hard to hurt that completely in front of people. It is hard to be unapologetic about your anger and confusion and feeling like you are constantly searching for something to anchor to because your anchor for pieces of you is gone.

Letting those pieces of you talk is hard. It takes incredible courage to give those pieces of you a voice.

I am talking about this because it is easy to blame people for not listening, and in my personal experience, that is valid. However, I think we need to give ourselves space to say, “I’m not brave enough to talk about how this has shattered me because to do that, I have to feel it all, and I don’t want to. It’s easier to be angry at other people.”

And understand, I don’t say that judgmentally.

I say that humanly.

But I can tell you from personal experience when I asked myself, “What would you tell these people if you knew they would listen?”, I found I didn’t have words. Either I couldn’t identify the emotions, or they were beyond my vocabulary’s ability to express. And being honest, in order to be raw in my grief meant I had to feel all that grief was, and I didn’t want to.

Acknowledging that maybe the real issue wasn’t completely about people not listening but also about my not wanting to feel was actually really healing for me because I didn’t feel abandoned in my pain. I didn’t feel like people failed me. I felt like we were all humans in a horrible situation that none of us knew how to navigate. Yes, there were some people who just said stupid things. I avoided them, a lot of them I still do, but I also realize they didn’t know how to help me in my grief anymore than I knew how to be honest and raw in my grief.

I really like that Michelle Pfeiffer’s character is giving words to grief and speaking what so many of us are either afraid to say or afraid to feel. I wish her character had been available when my husband and mom died, marriage crashed, and life changed so catastrophically. I think hearing her words would have been helpful in feeling my grief and expressing it.

For anyone grieving or who loves someone grieving, it might be something you want to check out.

Jerri Kelley