One of my favorite analogies of grief is that it is like peeling an onion; it comes off one layer at time and you cry a lot. That seems to sum it up about as well as anything I can imagine.
When authors like me first started writing about grief, we had very little to go on. Fortunately there was a wonderful woman named Elizabeth Kubler Ross who studied the dying experience and came up with some stages we go though as we prepare for death. As a result of her work, most of us authors adapted her stages to grief and pictured grief as a movement through some set stages. One of my books still talks of stages but it does qualify the use of that analogy by saying that the stages are not clear cut nor in order. Everyone grieves in their own way and on their own schedule. There is no way to put the experience into a box. I often say that grief is as unique as a fingerprint. No two are alike.
That is why I latched on to the onion idea and have held on for years. It allows me to present some layers that vary with each onion and show how we gradually peel them off one layer at a time. I even carry a fake onion with me to speaking engagements to make the presentation more graphic.
I have found a new onion analogy that I think has great potential. If there is an Outback Steakhouse anywhere near, then most of us have seen their advertisement for “The Blooming Onion.” That is an onion that looks like someone put a small charge inside of it and blew it into small protruding shards after which the whole onion was deep fried and served intact. I have never eaten one nor even seen one up close but I think of the grief journey every time I see the ad.
The blown apart onion is what grief looks and feels like. Every emotion is torn apart and set on edge ready to react with pain, fear, tears, or anger.
Our minds are blown apart into a whirl of thoughts and questions that seem to hit and run away before we can think them through or ask the questions. If we do ask, our minds wander away before anyone can answer, and we cannot concentrate enough to hear the answers if they do come.
We are physically exhausted. When a wave of grief overwhelms us our bodies secrete hormones that zap our energy and dehydrate our bodies. We are tired with no reason to be tired.
The shards of a blooming onion are sharp and yet vulnerable to the touch. We too tend to be easily set off and sometimes sharp in our responses. Easily hurt. Easily angry. Very touchy and tender.
The question then is, “How could the onion ever be put back together?” What a job that would be. I cannot imagine how long it would take. Every shard would demand tender and individual care. Each one would have to be cleaned to remove the coating that has collected in the cooking process. Even then, the onion would never be the same. Each shard had been changed by the process and they will no longer fit together like they once did. It would be like trying to put tooth paste back in the tube.
Grief too, is a long process of dealing with each feeling, each thought, and each encounter too often while someone is trying to coat us with their ideas and schedules. That is why we need safe people to walk with us and simply listen. I recognize that just talking and having someone listen does not sound like it will put the onion back together but it is the way each shard gets noticed, cleaned and lovingly handled. Too often we pull away and decide we are being too much of a burden or taking too long and try to take care of our grief in the silence of our own lives. The one evident truth about the blooming onion is it cannot put itself back together. I don’t think we can either.
Like the onion, we are not going to be the same. We never really get over the loss of a love. A chunk has been bitten out of our hearts and it will not grow back. The pain will lessen to a dull ache perhaps but it will find a way to come back for a visit at times for the rest of our lives. Perfect or not, it is certainly worth the effort. The blooming onion makes a pretty center piece on a table at the steak house, but left alone, it rots and smells bad.