Grief and Depression

Just over a week ago, the same day I published my last post, I found out that my grandfather had been diagnosed with late stage lung cancer. The initial assessment was that, with treatment, he might survive up to another year, but that his remaining time was more likely to be measured in months, and not many of those. I spent most of the rest of the week trying to pretend I did not know that my grandfather was dying, and the rest of it attempting to wrestle my emotions into tidy, easy to explain boxes. I did not write for the blog, in part, because doing so would force me to confront the fact that I was failing at both of these tasks. And that the day I came closest to succeeding was the worst day, in terms of my depression, I had all week.

Two days ago, less than a week after hearing that diagnosis, I woke up to the news that Grandpa had passed away.

I still can't fit my emotions into tidy boxes, but now they are to big to even pretend to ignore. At work today I spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between grief and depression. The following poem is inspired by the spoken word poem "OCD", and it is the closest I have yet come to describing those untidy emotions.

People think Grief and Depression are twins,
Either identical or fraternal, depending who you ask.
They are wrong, Grief and Depression are only kissing-cousins
Who are inseparable at the family reunion.

Grief, is a thousand serrated scalpels carving open my ribs,
Depression, is an anesthetic overdose stretching icy fingers towards my heart.
Grief and Depression are both an open hole in my chest:
Grief, aches. Depression, echoes.

Grief is my guilt and self-directed anger
That on my unexpected day off,
Depression would not let me pick up the phone
To call my dying grandfather.

Grief is my rage and despair
That I could not ask his forgiveness
For the stupid grudge I should not have held
So long that now he will never know I even kept it.

Grief is wild and painful and alive,
Fighting to be known and expressed,
In every moment of every day,
Like a beast gnawing off its paw to escape a trap.

Depression is a still and silent tomb,
Promising that the pain will go away,
That everything will be the way it was,
As soon as I can quiet my aching heartbeat.

When in the throes of Grief I sleep,
Because it is exhausting to cram so much living into so little time.
When Depression grips me I sleep,
So that my mind will be as empty as the heart that has forgotten how to feel.